Textual Analysis: City Lights (1931)
Sequence Running Time: 00:20:29 – 26:46
The extract I chose for my textual analysis is from the film City Lights, directed by as well as starring Charlie Chaplin. I am going to analyze the segment on 3 different contexts: geographical, historical and political. I will also be focusing on the elements of film, specifically: Mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound and the editing.
City Lights was originally supposed to be set in Paris (although it was filmed in Los Angeles) but it ended up being set in a fictional un-named city, Robert Sherwood said “it is a weird city, with confusing resemblances to London, Los Angeles, Naples, Paris, Tangiers and Council Bluffs. It is no city on earth and it is all cities.”. The majority of the film was shot in Chaplin Studios in Hollywood, the scene being analyzed was shot in said studios and was designed by Henry Clive in the summer of 1928. Eventually Clive would take the role of the drunken millionaire. It was also filmed in other parts of Los Angeles, primarily downtown.
Since the film took influence from many different cities, most viewers of the movie can’t distinguish where it is, yet they sense a relationship with the surrounding area. Chaplin was known for being very precise in his directing and acting, when he made the creative decision to let the city be fictional, he purposefully tried to make it seem similar but not quite the same. In the scene to be analyzed, the setting seems to be that of a European restaurant.
The history of the film started in 1928 when Chaplin started to write the script for it, with Harry Carr, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Right after at the time Charlie’s latest film released, The Circus they gradually worked on the script more and more. There are two similarities with both movies which was blindness. In the movie The Circus, a clown attempts to hide the fact that he has gone blind from his daughter. In City Lights it is the woman who is blind, and the Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) is falling in love with her. On the terms of the Drunken-Suicidal-Millionaire, Chaplin was considering using someone who at the time was at a very low point in the social scale, which was an African-American Newsboy. But since he was receiving backlash for his political statements at the time, he didn’t want this new film to be controversial, therefore he chose to use a character that he had used before in his short film The Idle Class, a drunk millionaire. Unfortunately, a tragedy struck during pre-production, when on August 28, 1928 Charlie’s mother passed away. This halted production until the fall of that year.
The filming of the movie started right after the Christmas of 1928, by this time Chaplin and Carr had almost an entire year to work on the script, one of the longest times Chaplin took to write one of his scripts. This long enduring pre-production phase was worth it in the end, critics say City Lights was one of his best films. In the early fall of 1930, the shooting of the film was finished. As mentioned before, Chaplin was known to be a perfectionist, therefore he re-shot scenes many more times than his other director companions. Due to this fact, the unedited film length was over 300,000 feet. From late Fall to mid-Winter Chaplin edited the film down to just 8,000 feet of film.
The scene starts off with the music interact with the scene. From the previous scene the music kept going from the fade out back to the fade in, the background characters are all dancing to the music. Then the song finishes, and they go back to their seats. this is a really clever transition because it shows that the background characters have been there for a while, which means that new ones are about to show up. Transitions like these aren’t very common, this would be an old example of clever transitioning, but a more modern type of clever transitions would be majority of Edgar Wright’s movies, like Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and Baby Driver. The beginning shows a wide shot with the complete set to give the viewer a sense of the surroundings. You’ll notice in a majority of Chaplin movies, he likes to show the setting before focusing in on the characters. When the background characters go to sit down, the camera pans to the left and follows the Tramp. When the Host ques the 2 characters, the camera moves to the center again and uses what most likely is a wheeled device to follow the 2 characters keeping the same distance the whole way until they sit down.
When the two sit down, immediately the viewers’ attention is drawn to the Tramp who is stuffing his cloth down his pants, which is humorous considering it’s supposed to go down your shirt. The shot at this point is a Knee Shot which is remaining stationary. As the scene progresses the viewers’ attention is moved left and right with exaggerated movements always on one side of the screen or the other to not confuse the viewer as to where their attention should be.
When the shot changes, it remains relatively the same, a medium close up. It then shows a medium shot of the waiter preparing the Millionaire and Tramps food. When the shot returns to the Millionaire and Tramp, the Tramp throws a cigar onto a woman’s chair. A very good transition occurs next, as he throws the cigar the shot is continual but switches to the chair, so the timing is exact. The next shot is a medium long shot, showing the Tramp and the woman as well as her table. When the man confronts the Tramp the shot starts moving back to show a long shot, then abruptly another long shot but from a different point of view, the reason the shot started moving back was to give a smoother transition, instead of going from a medium long shot to a long shot it would go from a long shot to a long shot so the viewers’ attention can refocus quicker. When the shot switches, it goes back to the waiter preparing the food, he acts as if nothing happened in-between the shots which adds to the comedic effect. There’s also some slight foreshadowing here as the background characters are starting to throw these curly strings around.
When the shot transitions back to the Tramp and the Millionaire the scene has turned to complete mayhem, there’s string being thrown everywhere and eventually it gets into the Tramps mouth, when he eats enough of it, he ends up standing up trying to eat the noodle strand. The camera pans upwards as he stands up and it turns into a technical close-up. When he sits back down the camera follows and returns to its original position, then to a side angle. He uses sound to show the spaghetti going into his mouth, an upward sound occurs every time he eats a single noodle. For a majority of this segment the 180-degree rule is present.
As soon as that clip finishes, another starts. From the original position of the entire set the camera is panned to the left, where the lighting goes dark and the spotlight is set on the approaching couple. As they enter the set the spotlight and camera follow them. The music goes with the choreography, as the man lifts the lady up the music goes to a higher note and when he brings her down it reaches a plateau. When the man pushes the woman, the lighting returns to normal and the spotlight it gone as the camera pans to the right a bit to make the viewer look to the right.
When the Tramp gets involved by pushing the man down, everybody in the background stand up, this shows that the scene is elevating in intensity. When the scene transitions to the next, it doesn’t need to move the camera forwards because the new scene is very obvious in where the viewers eyes should be looking. Notice how the viewers’ attention is to the right of the screen when the transition occurs so the viewer doesn’t need to change his or her attention which allows them to pay attention to the shot quicker.
The shot then moves backwards while people start flooding in dancing, like in the first part of the segment. After this, the shot change to look at their shoes which eventually leads up to them showing the Tramps shoes, then panning upwards showing how lonely he is because he has the only shoes that are without a companion. It then switches to a knee shot of the two protagonists. When the Tramp goes out of the scene, it transitions to wide shot of the entire set. Then the scene fades to a title card thus starting the next.