City Lights by Charles J. Maland;

Author:Charles J. Maland;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2019-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Charlie inadvertently sits on the first statue and uses the second to 'thumb his nose' to the crowd

The next scene further develops the tramp's character. A title card says 'Afternoon', and the 'Promenade' musical motif that plays at least seven times in the film, most often when the tramp is strolling along city streets, begins. The set is a street corner, with a music store in the foreground, a theatre and, to its left, a news and tobacco store across the street in the background.64 As people hurry along the pavement, the tramp saunters to the corner, places his cane under his arm, and turns to his left. As he walks off, a newsboy on the corner grabs the hook of his cane. When the tramp turns back to retrieve it and scold the newsboy by pointing his finger, the boy pulls the detached finger off the tramp's glove. The tramp tries to maintain an aura of respectability but then has to pull off the detached middle glove finger to snap his fingers at the boys. Because some of this episode is framed more tightly than the opening scene, the medium shots reveal that Charlie's respectable costume is a bit the worse for wear. The coat is too tight, the plaid vest frayed, the pants baggy, the gloves threadbare: if the music suggests the tramp is a gentleman, the costume reinforces the notion but suggests that he's fallen on hard times. While in the opening scene policemen and city elites chase the tramp, here two lowly street urchins make fun of him, further emphasising his isolation and social marginality. Nonetheless, his cane retrieved, the tramp continues walking right, past a 'danger' sign to the front of an art store display window that contains a small statue of a man holding the reins of a spirited horse and a life-size statue of a nude woman.

The film then cuts from the exterior of the art store to a reverse view from its interior. In the foreground we see the rear of the statues, the tramp in mid-range, and a men's furnishings store in the background.65 This shot - which constitutes the rest of the scene and the second longest take of the film at 83 seconds - is a brilliant exercise in character study, then suspense, then social dynamics.66

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