Tomorrow, the birds will sing!

Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp would make two more appearances after City Lights; his role in those films — Modern Times and The Great Dictator — would primarily be in the service of social commentary. Prior to City Lights, the iconic silent film character developed a beloved following by both appealing to emotion (The Kid) and getting himself into whimsical, comedic scenarios (The Gold Rush, The Circus). City Lights serves as a transitional film in that body of work — there is emotion, born out of the Tramp’s good deeds and romance with the Blind Girl; there is whimsy, arising from the ridiculous scenarios that the Tramp finds himself in; and there is social commentary, subtly integrated into the story instead of being its sole focus like it would be in the final two Tramp films.

The social commentary in City Lights is primarily about class — how we as a society treat people like the Tramp when we can only see their deeds and hear their words versus how we treat them once we recognize their social standing or see their ragged appearance.

The opening scene of City Lights takes place in a city square during the unveiling of a new monument. The city’s Mayor stands on a stage and delivers a speech to the assembled crowd — and when he opens his mouth to speak, we hear the sound of a kazoo instead of words (this was Chaplin’s defiant jab at the rise in popularity of “talkies.”) Behind him, the monument to Peace & Prosperity is shrouded in a tarp. After his speech, the tarp is raised… and the crowd is horrified to see the Tramp asleep in the arms of one of the statues. The crowd jeers, and the Tramp hilariously scrambles, getting his jacket caught on another statue’s sword before he is able to rip himself away.

This first scene clearly defines this vagrant’s place in society; the second scene reveals what he wants. We watch the Tramp salaciously eye up a statue of a naked woman in a store window; the statue stands starkly in the foreground while Chaplin paces back and forth in the mid-ground of the shot, in concert with a trapdoor opening and closing precariously behind him. Distracted, he eventually stumbles into the open pit and is yelled at by the angry storekeeper.

Once we know who he is and what he wants, we watch him have two serendipitous encounters — one with a Blind Girl selling flowers by a park, and another with a distressed Millionaire trying to drown himself in a river at night. These encounters shape the course of the Tramp’s story in the film.

When he first meets the Blind Girl, she feels the fabric of his jacket and hears a limousine drive away immediately after he buys a flower off of her; this makes the Blind Girl mistakenly believe that the Tramp is a wealthy man. He goes along with this misdirection because he is enamored with her. While blind, the Girl falls in love with him; he gives her attention, saves her from eviction, and pays for her — albeit with stolen money — to fly to Vienna for an experimental surgery that gives her back her sight.

The encounter with the Millionaire begins with the Tramp thwarting a suicide attempt, and continues with a raucous night of partying full of drinking, dancing, and a pasta dinner (with an accidental side dish of twirling ribbons). The Millionaire is so drunk throughout this evening that generosity flows freely from him; he gifts the Tramp his own Rolls-Royce out of gratitude for saving his life. But “the sober dawn awakens a different man,” as a title card says — without alcohol clouding his vision, the Millionaire wants nothing to do with the Tramp.

Drunk, he gives him $1,000; sober, he calls him a thief.

By the end of the film, the Tramp’s antics land him in jail. He is released after a short stint in prison, but the stay clearly has an effect on him: his pants and hat are ripped and torn, and his makeup is askew. He looks like a mess.

Blind, the Girl was enamored by his kindness, wooed by his “wealth” and charm, and speechlessly grateful for his generosity. But in the final scene of City Lights, she sees him for the first time in this ragged state. Before she recognizes who he is, she watches him get pelted by spitballs from the local paperboys. She laughs at this from her flower shop, thinking that he’s just another vagrant. But then, he sees her. His expression betrays a mix of affection, shock, and shame. He tries to buy a flower off of her again, but gets cold feet — he runs away, but she stops him and gives him a flower anyway.

Then, she recognizes the feeling of his hands and jacket. Her expression changes; she is disappointed, and he is embarrassed. The infatuation and attraction from earlier in the film seems, for a moment, to disappear entirely. But soon, her expression shifts from disappointment to tears of gratitude. “I can see now,” she tells him. He smiles giddily, but still shrouds his face with her flower as the picture fades to black.

It’s a bittersweet ending.

In a 1967 interview with LIFE Magazine, Chaplin was quoted as saying, “The most important thing is a close-up when somebody smiles or looks at somebody and it is real, and it is the end of the world and the beginning of everything.” In his body of work, that quote never rang more true than in this climactic moment, in which both characters are simultaneously crushed and deeply moved, and we see all of those emotions in their shifting expressions, captured in simple back-and-forth close-up shots.

The message conveyed by these two overlapping stories is clear: you can be a millionaire and be miserable and a vagrant who finds joy; you can be blind and see beauty, or a person with 20/20 vision who can only see what’s wrong. Social standing doesn’t decide whether you’re a good — or happy — person… but it does change what other people perceive a person’s intrinsic worth to be.

City Lights is thematically poignant, but the experience of watching it is not nearly as tragic as it sounds. It was crafted by comedic genius Charlie Chaplin, after all. Social commentary and emotional resonance is almost always under the guise of whimsical, inventive slapstick comedy. At the start of the film, when the Blind Girl thinks that the Tramp has gone, she walks over to a fountain to fill a pot with water; she tosses the liquid into the nearby bushes, splashing the Tramp right in the face in the process. When the Tramp unties the rope from around the Millionaire’s neck, it gets wrapped around him, and Chaplin finds himself unwittingly splashing about in the river. Later, there’s a hilarious gag at the Millionaire’s party during which the Tramp accidentally swallows a whistle and develops whistling hiccups that first distract from a musical performance, then attract a pack of dogs to the mansion. In another scene, the Tramp runs away from a long line of horses while working as a poop scooper so that he doesn’t have to clean up after them… and ends up walking right past an elephant coming from the other direction, whose defecation likely will be even worse. The Tramp’s attempts to accrue money for the Blind Girl constitute a comedy of errors unto itself, involving a hand soap sandwich, a hapless boxing match, and the Tramp being framed for someone else’s breaking and entering.

City Lights, like all of the best Charlie Chaplin movies, first and foremost makes you laugh.

Then, it makes you feel both sorry and happy for the Tramp… and by the end of the journey, it reminds you to be a little more empathetic, too.