Sunday, April 3, 2016

City Lights - Movie Review

Loved watching this 1931 Charlie Chaplin movie with Anjali. It's a silent movie. How Chaplin keeps you engaged throughout with his superb understanding of human nature is worth thinking about. The conflicts he creates between the rich, poor, man, woman, want and helplessness are conceived as only he can. The boxing match is out of the world - never laughed so much in recent times. I mean, you'd laugh at it when you are a kid and you can still laugh at it even as an adult. And the end is something that Anjali couldn't bear to see - thankfully it ended on a right note at the very last moment.

Chaplin creates these beautiful romances. The blind girl who sells flowers, the well meaning tramp who falls in love with her and helps her, the millionaire who is rescued by the tramp when he is drunk but who does not remember anything when sober and the climax when the tramp comes back out of jail and finds that the girl can see. But will she be able to see and recognise if this tramp is the same millionaire she thought helped her? Ah, lovely. 

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