This is the final scene in the silent Charlie Chaplin film "City Lights". Charlie Chaplin's character spends the movie struggling to support a blind woman he befriends and who believes that he is a rich man. In actuality he is homeless and spends his time doing odd jobs to try to pay for an operation to cure her blindness. When he finally gets her the money he is wrongly sent to prison for several months and the two lose contact. in this scene, the woman is cured but does not immediatly recognize chaplin whom she has never seen before, but then she recongnizes the feel of his hands as the scene fades out.
this scene is to me both sad and uplifting at the same time. it has great tension because although it is a happy ending it seems to be a small victory shared by people living lives of hardship. There is a very bleak desperate edge to this scene and indeed to the whole movie that i think captures something meaningful.
1 comment:
yeah, it seemed sort of bittersweet. i would have liked to study more film in the video class. I think film and video are different, but I think film in a valuable medium for artists interested in video. I think we learned more about gesture and less about story in our class and I think that narrative is actually a very useful tool in art. It can be useful as a means of delivery for art. I think good art often reveals the world in a way we haven't noticed and narrative is great for that. Chaplin is very poignant sometimes. I haven't seen much of him but I liked "the kid"
Post a Comment