City Lights - IMDB top 50, done

Finished off my long-running project to have watched all the IMDB's top 50 films the other night by watching Charlie Chaplain's classic silent romantic slapstick comedy - City Lights.

When watching films like this in the post-modern age, it is very easy to slip into a trap where you look at the production values, the lack of sound, the occasionally hammy acting and the back-lit special effects, and conclude that such films are historical artefacts.  They're something that can be appreciated only from the point of view of film history, rather than for what they were originally intended.  However it's a trap that one would do well not to fall into, as to do so would be to miss out on something genuinely enjoyable and touching.

City Lights follows the story of The Tramp - played by Chaplain - and his chance encounters with a blind flower girl and drunken upper class fop.  When he is kind to the girl and buys a flower from her, the passing of the rich man makes her think that The Tramp is in fact a man of great wealth.  When The Tramp saves the rich man from killing himself in a drunken rage, the two become great friends, but the rich man can only remember him when he's drunk.  When he's sober again he demands The Tramp out of his house immediately.  And so we have a story of a Tramp, the pariah of the modern city, ostracised by those who are able to judge him by his appearance, but loved by those that are either without sight or without inhibition and therefore free to judge him on the content of his character.  It's a stunningly simple premise, filmed in a stunningly simple way and rounded off with a simple scene of touching humanity that film buffs have occasionally labelled the best final scene of all time - in any film.

This is a Charlie Chaplain film, and as such there is plenty of slapstick physical comedy.  And most of it is pretty funny if slightly awkward-looking in places (again, desperately trying to avoid that trap).  Many people might find the lack of sound and slightly stagy production difficult to cope with, but it would take someone with an incredible hard heart to not take at least some enjoyment out of this film.  Personally I thought it was wonderful.

With the IMDB top 50 under my belt, the obvious progression is to move on to the top 100.  Clearly since the IMDB list is a living document that changes over time, I will need to keep on watching new films as they come out in order to maintain my record.  But that's not hard.  The top 100 has quite a few more titles that I've not even heard of before (and a few that raise my eyebrows - Snatch for example.  It's good, but top 100 all time?  Really?) so it might take a year or so to get through them.  Bring it on.