(1931) Chaplin on talkies, 1929: “I loathe them.” As stuffy orators intone at the unveiling of a monstrous group of civic statuary, the speech-less soundtrack imitates kazoos and chickens, even as the Little Tramp is revealed asleep in the arms of the matronly allegorical statue. And so, for the world of fans who had waited four years for Chaplin’s response to the talkie revolution, the answer was — except for a recorded music track, with sound effects like gunshots, clanging bells, and that whistle — a silent movie... and a masterpiece. But this time channeled through the double tracks of parallel plots: the suicidal zillionaire who, saved from drowning by Charlie, becomes his bosom buddy... until that darned sobriety returns; and Virginia Cherrill’s beautiful blind flower girl, who in offering the shabby Tramp a boutonnière, mistakes him for a swell stepping out from his limo. (Cherrill, a socialite and film neophyte, disliked Chaplin, and vice versa — he tried to fire her once and cast her only because she could avoid grotesquerie when faking blindness. Soon after, she became the first Mrs. Cary Grant.) En route, Charlie mistakes cheese for soap and confetti for spaghetti, gets stuck streetcleaning behind an elephant, interrupts a society soloist with whistle-augmented hiccups,continually unknowingly teeters on the brink as a street elevator up-and-downs behind his to-and-froing before a naked statue in shop window; and turns a safely-fixed-but-now-it-dangerously-isn’t prize fight into a hilariously synchronized pas de trois; all, ultimately for love of Cherrill, culminating in the legendary scene of recognitions: the final close-up (emulated by Giulietta Masina in Nights of Cabiria and Woody Allen in Manhattan) was later proclaimed by James Agee as “the greatest piece of acting and the highest moment in movies.” Christmas Day is the 30th Anniversary of Chaplin’s death. “If only one of Chaplin’s films could be preserved, City Lights would come the closest to representing all the different notes of his genius. It contains the slapstick, the pathos, the pantomime, the effortless physical coordination, the melodrama, the bawdiness, the grace, and, of course, the Little Tramp — the character said at one time to be the most famous image on earth.” – Roger Ebert.
A KINO INTERNATIONAL RELEASE.
Showtimes: 1:00, 4:40, 8:20

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CHARLIE CHAPLIN: INTERVIEWS
edited by Kevin J. Hayes