City Lights (United Artists). It is almost a law in publicity-loving Southern California that the two greatest personalities there present shall hobnob while the press & public loudly cheer or jeer. Usually this means William Randolph Hearst and whatever foreign personage happens to be visiting Hollywood. But last week it meant Charles Spencer Chaplin and Albert Einstein. All of Hollywood's police reserves turned out one evening to make tunnels through the populace so that Mr. Chaplin could escort Dr. Einstein and a party of scientists to see the first new Chaplin film in two years.
Hollywood is volatile, jealous and perhaps sinful. But it is intensely loyal to the little man whom it used to call Charlie before the wide world called him Charlot, Carlos, Cha-pu-rin and as many more variations as there are languages. Had City Lights been a failure, Hollywood would have been personally and bitterly depressed. But Hollywood was not depressed. Neither was it frightened. For though City Lights is a successful silent challenge to the talkies, its success derives solely from the little man with the battered hat, bamboo cane and black mustache. Critics agree that he, whose posterior would probably be recognized by more people throughout the world than would recognize any other man's face, will be doing business after talkies have been traded in for television.
City Lights is not silent in the strictest sense. Synchronized sound effects and music are used beginning with the very first sequence, where the talkies are burlesqued by horn sounds that make the actors seem to be talking with their mouths full of mush. Also there is an episode where Mr. Chaplin swallows a whistle. Each time he coughs he whistles and he cannot stop coughing. Taxis hurry up and stop, dogs overwhelm him. Hollywood also grew hysterical during a prizefight in which Charlie survives two rounds by dodging so briskly that the referee is always between him and his murderous opponent.
To thread together these and kindred quaint inventions the picture tells the story of a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill). He falls in love with her, encouraging her to believe he is a millionaire. His difficulties in getting funds to maintain this reputation in her unseeing eyes supply most of the complications. He finally acquires $1,000 for which he is promptly and unjustly jailed. When he emerges she has regained her sight by the aid of the thousand. As the film fades she recognizes in the ragged helpless vagrant the wealthy prince she dreamed about in darkness.
A "running gag"* much admired by Hollywood experts is built up in a millionaire who, when drunk, is Chaplin's dearest friend; when sober, has him thrown out of the house. A new gag: Chaplin trying to light his cigar but succeeding only in lighting the cigar which another character is waving airily before his face. As in all Chaplin films there are touches of smut: Chaplin as a busy street cleaner seeing an endless troop of mules, hurrying in the opposite direction, only to meet an elephant; Chaplin acting girlish toward a prize fighter stripping for battle.