Charlie Chaplin's performance in "City Lights"

Charlie Chaplin's City Lights from 1931 is considered one of the most romantic movies of all-time. It is also one of the most visually inventive comedies of the silent era. Chaplin’s acting performance establishes a highpoint in physical comedy that anchors the entire movie. Both his facial expressions and physical body movement interact with the film’s cinematography to create visual surges that are both hilarious and cinematic. 

The best example is the “At the Club” scene. This initiates with the cigar lighting sequence where Chaplin utilizes the power of the close-up camera to read his face in a series of expressive tics and gestures. The scene begins with a visual sight gag: lighting his friend’s cigar by mistake. When it continues to be lit and re-lit, the gag turns into a long running and frustratingly repetitive joke. Chaplin’s eyebrows arch, his cheeks twitch, and his mustache dances from left to right as he reacts to relighting the cigar. It is a well-choreographed and extensively rehearsed sequence of pantomime representative of the purely visual tradition of early cinema.

This tradition, with emphasis on expressions, would soon disappear with the rise of sound pictures, thus giving this sequence an added significance. Jokes quickly shifted to more verbal, dialogue-driven telling. As a future example, the famous “Who’s on First?” joke by Abbot and Costello would take influence from this style of repetitious, frustrating humor. Chaplin’s lighting and relighting without a word spoken will be supplanted by a verbal pattern of retelling a single line for comedic effect.

 

Throughout Chaplin’s cigar lighting sequence the camera remains static. It is one long, continuous take, lasting for just under one minute. This is the second shot in the “At the Club” scene, following a conventional establishing master shot. For this second angle, the camera moves in closer, yet remains motionless for the duration of the joke. This enables both actors to express all the humor themselves, without having any attention drawn away by elaborate camera moves or even rapid cutting. As a result, the cinematography here is as crucial to the scene’s humor as any other visual element.

 

The second part that utilizes Chaplin’s physical humor is the scene’s final dancing sequence. Unlike the cigar lighting section, Chaplin utilizes his entire body from head to toe while executing several elaborate and hilarious dance moves. The first moment occurs when the woman begins shaking her body in front of Chaplin. His whole body reacts; not by moving, however, but by not moving. He completely freezes. This is a hilarious contrast to his previous toe-tapping, hands-thumping, rhythmical response to the upbeat band music. He looks the woman up and down as the audience can only imagine what he might be thinking or about to do. She is swept away by another dancer, yet the seeds of arousal have been planted. When the next dancer appears in front of him, Chaplin leaps up and grabs her. He swings her around the dance floor, twirling her away in a series of pirouettes that imitate an ice skating duo. This physicality is a very visual movement along the z-axis of the cinematic frame, which adds a level of physical dynamism to the scene in contrast to the previous moments at the stationary dinner table. Chaplin concludes the scene when his dancing partner is replaced by the waiter, and the mismatched pair spiral down to the floor.

 

Once again, the cinematography plays a crucial role in this portion of the scene. When the band strikes up its first rousing notes, the camera tracks backwards from the trombone player and continues through the middle of the crowded dance floor. This very elaborate camera move is followed by a second intricate tracking shot of the dancers’ feet across the floor, then landing on Chaplin’s tapping toes. The camera then tilts up to reveal Chaplin’s fully expressive posture. The two elements are subsequently joined at this moment combining for the perfect apex to the scene: Chaplin’s full-bodied physical performance along with the elaborate cinematography. This intricate visual series occurs at the perfect moment to provide a rich texture to the “At the Club” scene’s climax, which is a cinematic technique utilized by filmmakers to this day.