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The Sporking Life

The Sporking Life: "City Lights"


Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin, Silent Movies,
and the Great Depression







Guest author:  Robert McManus



Free coffee for the unemployed was a common site during this country's Great Depression
https://www.thebalance.com/great-depression-timeline-1929-1941-4048064






“Hollywood played a valuable psychological role during the Great Depression. It provided reassurance to a demoralized nation. ... A renewed sense of optimism generated by the New Deal combined with industry self-censorship to produce new kinds of films during the Depression's second half.”
  

Two events of 1929 radically changed the motion picture industry in the United States; the widespread adoption of sound and the beginning of the Great Depression.  Just as depicted in "Singin' In the Rain" the introduction of sound was devastating.  The "Demon Mike" ruined the career of many silent film stars.  


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_film




Stage actors, particularly British stage actors, were brought in to fill the gap, but they were used broad, sweeping gestures to play to an entire theater, not the more subtle movements that was used in filmmaking.  The early sound camera was almost entirely static, changing the movies from fluid and free flowing to largely immobile.  This difference is best seen in the 1927/1928 winner of the Academy Awards "Wings" (a silent film where the camera truly soars) to the 1928/1929* winner "The Broadway Melody" where the camera is almost entirely still and everything but the song and dance numbers is dialogue, dialogue and dialogue.


* Prior to 1934 the nomination period for the Academy Awards ran from August 1 to July 31, hence the two year periods.

To make matters worse no one knew how to make a sound film.  Several pictures of the era are just people sitting around and talking.  Others are no more than filmed plays.  Many directors struck out and experimented, some which led to the language of cinema we know today, others that were more... visionary.  One fine example of this is the Hal Roach "Our Gang" short "Teacher's Pet" in which twin sisters read the credit in unison; introducing a comedy with an effect similar to what Stanley Kubrik would achieve fifty years later in "The Shining."






From "The Shining"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3298376/Grady-daughters-horror-classic-Shining-reveal-like-working-movie.html




At the same time sound was being adapted, The Depression was in its worst years.  The low revenues and the cost of transitioning to sound equipment forced a number of smaller studios out of business.  Some did survive; the aforementioned Hal Roach kept on making movies until 1938.  Others survived by making serials or short films.


Depression era movie marquees
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/ritelitesigns/theater-marquee-signage/





Scene from "The Circus," 1925




Charlie Chaplin had started working on a picture after completing "The Circus" in 1928.  This was before sound took off, so it was started as a silent picture.  He was a slow worker, in part because he was a perfectionist and in part because he almost never started a film with a completed script.  So he would have to stop production while he came up with new ideas.  He owned his own studio, so he could get away with it, but as his picture progressed sound was becoming more prominent.  He didn't transition it to sound.  By the time the picture was released in 1931 the major studios made exclusively sound films; yet Chaplin's film, "City Lights" was an enormous success.  Chaplin would go on to make another silent film "Modern Times" in 1936 and use a variation of his "Tramp" character again in 1940's "The Great Dictator," his first talkie.


https://secure.franklintheatre.com/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=62161~cfe40b7d-1c56-4c4b-b937-600bdd7c5904




http://tpr.org/post/city-lights-shines-blu-ray


 
Technically neither "City Lights" nor "Modern Times" are silent films, they both had recorded soundtracks that were played along with them.  Chaplin instead called "City Lights" "A Comedy Romance in Pantomime."  Silent films were accompanied by live music.  Some of the movie palaces had full orchestras; others had to make do with less.  My Grandfather was alive during the silent era; he remembers going to afternoons children's matinees.  The children were packed in without the slightest regard for safety, with some sitting in the aisles or on ledges at the back of the theater.  Those films were accompanied by a pianist; and all the boys would bring their pea-shooters and pelt him throughout the performance.





The audience was more polite than that this year as, to open their season, the Brevard Symphony Orchestra, played the soundtrack to "City Lights" live along to the movie.  The soundtrack was written by Chaplin himself (although the main theme is a variation of a dance hall number by Jose Pedilla.)  Chaplin would go on to write most of his own soundtracks in the sound era; in fact his only Academy Award (other than the honorary ones) was for Best Original Dramatic Score for “Limelight.”


To me, seeing the live orchestra performance didn't add much to the movie.  While the score is decent, it's incidental.  There are groups which specialize in providing soundtracks to silent films.  I recommend the Alloy Orchestra who has all sorts of silent movies in their repertoire; but those are all original scores and are written to be dynamic.  Their music is an experience in itself.  In this case watching the movie with the original score would have been nearly an identical experience.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/silents-contemporary-scores-for-classic-silent-films-mw0000040152






The film tends to end up on many critics’ "Best of" lists.  I disagree with that; the film's problem lies in that much of the film is like a series of short films strung together.  This was due to the way Chaplin made movies; he didn't have a completed idea when he started, so he had to come up with bits to flesh out the movie.  Some of the individual scenes are hilarious, but they really don't drive the plot. 



Opening scene from "City Lights"



 Most Chaplin films are like that, many rely on dream sequences or similarly wandering plots to get the funny bits in.  It's obvious, for instance, the Chaplin had an idea for a really funny boxing match so he just grafted it onto his story. 





“City Lights” centers on a blind girl who thinks The Tramp is a millionaire.  The Tramp, through pluck and determination, manages to make enough money to pay for an operation to cure her blindness, but realizes that, by doing so, she'll be able to see him for what he really is. 






My personal pick for greatest silent comedy is Buster Keaton's "The General."  Keaton didn't do pathos, no comedian, really no dramatist, of the silent era could match Chaplin for tears.  Keaton, though, could put together a film where the story flows and every scene builds on the one before it. 








It is still a great film though, and the audience enjoyed it immensely.  Watching silent films, and especially silent comedies, live is a great experience.  The film combines humor and pathos as Chaplin does best - The film critic James Agee called the ending "The greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid".  Still people who know movies much better than I do (including no less than Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrik) list "City Lights" as one of their favorite films.

























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