The biggest surprise about this month’s release of Charles Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) is that it wasn’t already a part of Criterion’s prestigious collection. Though several of his other masterworks have already been featured, it’s this 1931 title that many deem to be the quintessential of all his Little Tramp films, a light and breezy comedy that’s as effortlessly comical as it is undeniably moving. Credited as his last silent film, it stands as one of the most revered silent films ever made, famously released after the advent of sound due to Chaplin’s steadfast obsession with cinema as a silent art. And to make the Tramp speak would only have resulted in tantamount sacrilege, a magic and mystery that would have evaporated with the insistent new technology.
A tramp (Charles Chaplin) wanders the streets of Los Angeles, involved in a series of comic scenarios before...
A tramp (Charles Chaplin) wanders the streets of Los Angeles, involved in a series of comic scenarios before...
- 11/19/2013
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
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