Review of City Lights (2014) by Sean L — 13 Sep 2018

Charlie Chaplin falls for a blind flower girl and lives the high life with a lush, amnesiac fatcat, sampling and exploiting various urban lifestyles along the way. Playful and carefree, like all the classic auteur's best pantomimes, this is more of a loosely-related collection of skits than an all-enveloping story.

The sidetracks are all great, of course - The Tramp and a late replacement swinging for the fences in the boxing ring, all manner of drunken hijinx in a ritzy club on New Year's Eve, slapstick encounters with a newly-unveiled statue before an outraged audience - but it doesn't get quite as deep under the skin as Chaplin's masterpieces.

That he doesn't share a wealth of chemistry with his leading lady, Virginia Cherrill (who endured a contentious relationship with the star during production), isn't so much to blame as their too-swift courtship and her disappearance during the second act.

We never really get a chance to grow into loving them as a couple, though their sweet parting shot serves as proof that such spoils were within reach. Stuffed with ideas and ingenuity, City Lights still makes for an endearing, if scatter-brained, early romantic comedy.