Taking on a year-long challenge like this can be, well, challenging. Many of the films I’ve covered this year, and all but two of the remaining films, are films I have covered before over on the AFI Challenge. So, I have the additional challenge of also having to find something new to say about these works that I covered before. I would like to think I have largely succeeded there. But this entry, City Lights, well, this one has an angle I hadn’t even considered possible before. See, this one is another rewatch, a film I covered for the first time in 2018, and I have an angle for this one that I haven’t been able to do for any of the other entries in either the Stacker Countdown or the AFI Challenge.
See, this one marks the first time I didn’t watch the film alone.
So, I don’t often give too many details about my own life here, but suffice to say I have been dating someone for most of the past year. We tend to talk by phone once a week and then go out one day on the weekend if we have time. I’m not sure if I can call her a “girlfriend” with all that implies, but we both have a lot in common on many levels with one noteworthy exception for the purposes of this review: she’s not a film buff like I am. That’s not because she doesn’t like going to the movies. She does. She just doesn’t have the time to do so like I apparently do. But she did have an idea: make our weekly hang-outs watching a movie that I may have seen but she most certainly hasn’t. So far, we’ve seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Young Frankenstein, and when the time came to watch one this past weekend, I knew she wanted to see some Charlie Chaplin and recommended we switch to City Lights and not do the Boris Karloff Frankenstein double-feature as originally planned. And that’s basically what we did.
Now, my friend had no real prior exposure to silent movies at all, and I am a teacher by profession. One of the things I love about my job is it allows me to expose things I love to others, and the biggest advantage to that this time around is that I am showing off something to someone who is actually interested in seeing it. So, how did it go?
Pretty well actually. My friend has a good sense of humor, and from the moment Chaplin’s Little Tramp first appears sleeping atop an unveiled statue commemorating peace and prosperity, she was laughing heartily and often. We both have a good appreciation for Chaplin’s pantomime gift, and she had some interesting observations on her own, such as asking why a fancy nightclub seemed to be serving spaghetti for dinner. Yeah, it’s mostly to set up a visual gag of Chaplin’s finding himself eating a streamer from the ceiling after taking a mouthful, but it’s an interesting observation. She thought the film was English because of what side of the car a steering wheel was set. And yes, we both had a good laugh over the boxing scene while appreciating that look of hope the Tramp has as the young woman he was helping was starting to recognize him after her sight was restored.
Of course, afterwards, we got to talking, and I opted to show her Chaplin’s big monologue from the end of The Great Dictator, Chaplin’s most famous “talkie,” the proof that the man had, in fact, a wonderful speaking voice that didn’t often get used in his best-remembered work for obvious reasons.
Her big reaction to this speech was to note how relevant that speech still is today. That’s rather depressing, actually.
As it is, sitting down to watch a Chaplin comedy was a wonderful way to spend the evening. Silent movies aren’t always as easy to get into, but comedies done right often still work, and I learned to love Chaplin’s work when I did the AFI Challenge, so having someone else watch one for the first time and also find herself loving it, well, that made the Stacker Challenge worthwhile all by itself.
Oh, I also exposed her to David S. Pumpkins for the first time, and she enjoyed that too. It was a good night.
NEXT: City Lights runs a brisk hour and a half or so, but the next entry in the Challenge starts a streak of three hour+ films. Be back soon for the first, Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai.
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