The Refracted Light

Charlie Chaplin is curiously well known here in Japan. It'd been several years since I'd watched any of his longer films so I watched 1931's City Lights again last night. The film, like most of Chaplin's films about his famous Little Tramp, hinges on the character's efforts and worth going unrecognised or unappreciated, which I can see being poignant to a Japanese audience in a way not totally unlike Kyuzo in Seven Samarai or Rengoku in Kimetsu no Yaiba. Of course, the film's appeal is universal, too.

There are two plots of mistaken identity in City Lights--the blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) who mistakes the Tramp (Chaplin) for a rich man and the millionaire (Harry Myers) who only recognises the Tramp as a friend when he's drunk.

Shed of his inhibitions by the effects of alcohol, he recognises the Tramp as the man who convinced him not to commit suicide. Of course, his butler sees the shabbily dressed little man as vermin at all times.

Chaplin's films can lean too far into sentimentality but City Lights works because for the most part the scenes that go for the heart are short and simple. And most of the film is spent with Chaplin's brilliant slapstick which, in addition to being funny, keeps the character human. We meet him waking up on a new public statue as it's being unveiled and as he tries to leave as inconspicuously as possible he encounters an accident that makes him exceedingly conspicuous--his pants are punctured by the statue's sword. His sense of dignity and ill-fated attempts to avoid embarrassment are simultaneously so absurd and so credible they crystalise an impression of his humanity in an extraordinary way. All of this accrues force to make a quiet, simple scene with the blind girl intensely powerful.

City Lights is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1458

Foretelling wasps the afternoon dissolves.
Propeller blades were slowly wiped away.
Colluding problems crashed without resolve.
With apprehensions Snickers shan't allay.
Expressive lungs absorb the battered lunch.
Connected hands could crush the crystal board.
Banana spheres defeat the pricey bunch.
A giant fruit replaced the juicy hoard.
Collected jams arrest the toast at dawn.
For butter's worth we burned a panless cake.
You glimpsed the meal across the candy lawn.
We saved a blade of grass for ballast's sake.
The sea was green again with shark guitars.
Another mountain touched the skies of Mars.

The Hundred Year Soldier or Tree?

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Shoulder Arms, one of several films Charlie Chaplin directed and starred in in 1918. But at forty-six minutes it was by far the longest film he'd directed and remained so until 1921's The Kid. Shoulder Arms remains a brilliant film. It lacks the pathos his films became known for following The Kid but it also clearly shows Chaplin's ability to translate his comedic storytelling to directing.

Filmed during World War I, Shoulder Arms transports Chaplin's Tramp to the trenches, his uniform somehow having the same measurements to emphasise his tiny shoulders and exaggerate his legs.

There's a lot of good material in the young fellow's life trying to look nonchalant and brave in the trench but the film really picks up for me when he goes behind enemy lines disguised as a tree.

The commitment and determination on his face get me every time. This is a serious strategy and, by gum, it does work as he slyly clunks a few Germans over the head. The Germans, of course, don't come off very well in this film with their almost universal moustaches with waxed tips--so distinctive that when Chaplin encounters a Frenchwoman played by Edna Purviance he mimes to her that he can't be German as she first thinks because he has the wrong moustache. Obviously this was a bit that couldn't be repeated in The Great Dictator.

Purviance is no Mabel Normand (whose own movie, Mickey, was top box office in 1918), Chaplin's former leading lady, but she was always a capable supporting performer for Chaplin. She has a chance to show off some of her own comedic instincts towards the end of the film.

Another highlight is her bombed out building where Chaplin's character takes refuge. His shutting the window and shutter before stretching and collapsing on the bed of a room without a wall is absurd in itself but also says something about how hungry the young soldier is for a familiar domestic environment. Still, this one is mainly played for laughs and is worth watching a century on.