Review of City Lights (2014) by Ben L — 08 Dec 2015

In the past few months I have watched my first 2 silent films, and both were directed by and starred one of the all-time greats of silent cinema. That allowed me to make some snap judgments based on the singular work I've seen from each of them.

While Buster Keaton impressed me tremendously with his eye for shot selection and stunt work in The General, Charlie Chaplin seems to have a much stronger eye for comedic staging and story-telling in City Lights.

I was so amazed at how much I was laughing at a film with some of the classic gags I've already seen copied by countless other film-makers in the future. Clearly the imitators never proved to be quite as effective at this stuff as Chaplin, who did it first.

I also loved how detailed this story was, and yet I followed it all the way through without much dialogue at all. In fact I was so interested in the story and connected to the characters that my eyes actually started to well up at the end.

I'm surprised to say it, but I genuinely loved this movie. There were a few gags that got a little tedious because they dragged on a bit longer and were more repetitive than they needed to be, but in a strange way, sometimes the repetition ended up making me laugh more.

I'll admit that, since it's silent, I'm less likely to watch it again in the future. However I'm absolutely delighted that I've seen City Lights, and I would highly recommend it to anyone.