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| Charles
Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Harry Myers, Florence Lee,
Hank Mann |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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The Tramp (Charles Chaplin): Be
careful how you're driving.
Eccentric Millionaire (Harry Myers): Am I driving?
The Tramp struggles to help a blind
flower girl he has fallen in love with.
 When
Hollywood changed over to producing sound pictures after the mammoth
success of The Jazz Singer in 1927, it meant the end of
many a silent comedians career. With hardly any exceptions, the
only silent-era stars to survive the transition to sound were those
few talents like Laurel and Hardy who were able to transform their
purely physical routines into verbal comedy (though even rarities
like these didn't stay around for very long). But three years after
the revolution that had transformed the film industry, Chaplin
flat-out refused to adapt his skills to the latest fashion, and
produced City Lights, a feature-length comedy identified
explicitly in its opening credits as 'a comedy romance in pantomime'.
Of course, only the world's most beloved silent comic proved able
to pull this off successfully, producing one of his most carefully
crafted and impeccably timed masterpieces which is still regarded
by many as his finest single work. In City Lights, Chaplin
remains faithful to the structures and conventions of silent comedy,
while making expert use of the added possibilities of synchronized
sound. Many of the film's jokes hinge on sound effects, announcing
its disdain for sound film in its opening scene, where a kazoo
voices the words spoken in an official's speech to the crowd. What
follows is an uninterrupted string of comic genius, in which the
world-famous Little Tramp offers the most convincing - and heartbreaking
- proof of the power of decency, romanticism and his trump card:
politeness. Even while suspended by his britches from a newly presented
statue, the Tramp can't stop tipping his hat in apology to the
spectators. |
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A Region 1 DVD was originally
released by Image, with mediocre image quality. More recently,
the international distribution rights for Chaplin's feature
films have moved to the Paris-based MK2, which is releasing
double-disc DVD editions of his major work in collaboration
with Warner.
Warner's international release schedule is bafflingly complicated: The Gold
Rush, Modern Times, The Great Dictator and Limelight were
first released in North-America both individually and as a first 'Chaplin Collection'
box set on 1 July, 2003. All ten feature-length titles in the Chaplin Collection
were then released at once on 22 September, 2003, in Europe, also both individually
and in a large variety of box sets including a complete 18-disc collection and
a seven-disc Essentials Box. Both these box sets contain the 132-minute documentary Charlie by
Richard Schickel. The next batch of releases for North-America is scheduled for
early 2004. The versions being released for Region 1 and 2 have identical contents,
but the Region 1 versions suffer from video errors resulting from poor PAL-to-NTSC
conversion. The Region 2 double-disc set from Warner/MK2 served as the basis
for this release.
The fullscreen image is
framed at its original aspect ratio of approx. 1.33:1. The
image has been meticulously restored, offering a clean, high-contrast
transfer that's impressive throughout. Some damage to the
surviving prints was beyond repair, but these moments are
few and far between in a highly impressive transfer with
very little grain or other distractions. (NOTE: The films
in Warner/MK2's new Chaplin Collection were
transferred
from
the restored high-definition masters to PAL video. For the
Region 1 release of these DVDs, the PAL transfers were converted
to NTSC, resulting in many instances of ghosting, aliasing
and other conversion flaws. The Region 2 release therefore
boasts superior image quality to the American version. Read this
article for more information on the PAL-NTSC
issue.)
Both the original mono soundtrack and a new Dolby
Digital 5.1 remix are included on this release. The mono track, presented
in Dolby Digital 2.0, sounds harsh and tinny in comparison with the excellent,
more full-bodied 5.1 remix, with offers excellent separation of the sound effects
from the orchestral score, and a good spread of the score across the soundstage.
As on the other Chaplin Collection
DVDs, an excellent introduction from Chaplin
biographer David Robinson starts off the second disc, offering
the appropriate amount of historical context for the film,
detailing the incredibly long production time and decision
to make it a silent film in spite of the industry moving
to sound. The 25-minute featurette in the
'Chaplin Today' series starts off promisingly, with fascinating
clips of rehearsal footage for key scenes in the film, and
comparisons to scenes from Chaplin's earlier films. But this
item soon becomes an extended interview with stop-motion
animator Nick Park (co-founder of Aardman animation), who
spends a lot of time watching scenes from the film and commenting
on them. The points he makes tend to be rather obvious, making
one wish for a more elaborate look at the production or a
more informed perspective on the film's unique qualities.
Far more engaging is a complete seven-minute outtake removed
by Chaplin because it interrupted the flow of the rest of
the film. This hilarious scene, presented with excellent
video quality and without any sound, is good enough to stand
on its own as a short subject dealing with the Tramp's continued
attempts to push a stubborn piece of wood down a storefront
grate, and the atttention he attracts with this. It's vintage
Chaplin, about as good as anything in City Lights but
clearly not a part of the film's overall structure, and therefore
justifiably cut.
The confusingly titled section 'Documents' contains a wide
variety of archival video material, ranging from behind-the-scenes
footage of Chaplin directing and acting the scene where he
first meets the flower girl through various screen tests
and rehearsal footage through to newsreels of Winston Churchill
visiting the set and the first known film footage in which
Chaplin's voice is heard. All fascinating stuff, most of
which is completely silent.
A 10-minute excerpt from Chaplin's 1915
short The Champion is a welcome supplement, as it
can be viewed as an early study for the boxing scene featured
in City Lights. Hilarious, but presented without
the usual piano accompaniment, unfortunately. Three trailers (in
English, French and German, respectively) for the film have
been edited into a single 9-minute item, and an abundance
of behind-the-scenes still photography has
been collected into an enormous photo gallery with
six animated sections. A wide variety of international film
posters are also presented here, while the ten-minute
selection of scenes from the ten films in the Chaplin Collection
rounds out the extras on this release. A
succession of two stills from the film leads into the main static
menu screen, as with the other titles in the Chaplin Collection.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed:
5 October, 2003
Click
here for IMDB info on City
Lights.
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to return to the front page.
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