CINEMA

City Lights (United Artists). It is almost a law in publicity-loving Southern California that the two greatest personalities there present shall hobnob while the press & public loudly cheer or jeer. Usually this means William Randolph Hearst and whatever foreign personage happens to be visiting Hollywood. But last week it meant Charles Spencer Chaplin and Albert Einstein. All of Hollywood's police reserves turned out one evening to make tunnels through the populace so that Mr. Chaplin could escort Dr. Einstein and a party of scientists to see the first new Chaplin film in two years.

Hollywood is volatile, jealous and perhaps sinful. But it is intensely loyal to the little man whom it used to call Charlie before the wide world called him Charlot, Carlos, Cha-pu-rin and as many more variations as there are languages. Had City Lights been a failure, Hollywood would have been personally and bitterly depressed. But Hollywood was not depressed. Neither was it frightened. For though City Lights is a successful silent challenge to the talkies, its success derives solely from the little man with the battered hat, bamboo cane and black mustache. Critics agree that he, whose posterior would probably be recognized by more people throughout the world than would recognize any other man's face, will be doing business after talkies have been traded in for television.

City Lights is not silent in the strictest sense. Synchronized sound effects and music are used beginning with the very first sequence, where the talkies are burlesqued by horn sounds that make the actors seem to be talking with their mouths full of mush. Also there is an episode where Mr. Chaplin swallows a whistle. Each time he coughs he whistles and he cannot stop coughing. Taxis hurry up and stop, dogs overwhelm him. Hollywood also grew hysterical during a prizefight in which Charlie survives two rounds by dodging so briskly that the referee is always between him and his murderous opponent.

To thread together these and kindred quaint inventions the picture tells the story of a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill). He falls in love with her, encouraging her to believe he is a millionaire. His difficulties in getting funds to maintain this reputation in her unseeing eyes supply most of the complications. He finally acquires $1,000 for which he is promptly and unjustly jailed. When he emerges she has regained her sight by the aid of the thousand. As the film fades she recognizes in the ragged helpless vagrant the wealthy prince she dreamed about in darkness.

A "running gag"* much admired by Hollywood experts is built up in a millionaire who, when drunk, is Chaplin's dearest friend; when sober, has him thrown out of the house. A new gag: Chaplin trying to light his cigar but succeeding only in lighting the cigar which another character is waving airily before his face. As in all Chaplin films there are touches of smut: Chaplin as a busy street cleaner seeing an endless troop of mules, hurrying in the opposite direction, only to meet an elephant; Chaplin acting girlish toward a prize fighter stripping for battle.

Cinema is primarily an industry, secondarily an art. Squat, tasteful red brick buildings in the heart of Hollywood are the physical evidences of Chaplin's supremacy as industrialist as well as artist. Chaplin finances his own pictures and shrewdly supervises their sale and distribution. He writes them, casts them, directs them. He works by mood. He shoots thousands upon thousands of feet of film, saving perhaps 50 feet that he feels is right. When things go wrong he stops work and plays tennis. Sometimes he works all night. He listens to a great lot of advice, disregards most of it. Sometimes his spasmodic working habits bewilder his subordinates. To ease their minds he has instructed a special studio watchman to keep a lookout for his car and swiftly warn the workers of its approach. Thus laggards will not lose their self-respect by having the boss catch them in a poker game.

Chaplin does not reject the sound device because he does not think his voice will register. His objection is that cinema is essentially a pantomimic art. Says he: "Action is more generally understood than words. Like the Chinese symbolism it will mean different things according to its scenic connotation. Listen to a description of some unfamiliar object--an African wart hog, for example. Then look at a picture of the animal and see how surprised you are."

City Lights cost $1,500,000 to produce.

Before release it had sold to a guaranteed booking of more than $4,000,000. Chaplin worked frantically to make it his greatest, to justify his faith in pantomime. Chance guests would be hauled into his projection room to see rushes of the film. They were asked to describe what they had seen. If they missed a point that was intended to be clear Chaplin--feeling that his story must be understood by everyone, even the stupid or the distracted--would have the scene refilmed. In rest intervals he would play "Violetera" on his harmonium and sing an imitation of Spanish words to it in the manner of Raquel Meller. One afternoon he nearly lost his mustache. He has had the same one for 15 years. A Manhattan theatrical barber picked it out for him. He says that if he ever loses it he will play smooth shaven. On this day he came in just in time to see a guest about to throw the mustache away, mistaking it for hair combings on Chaplin's makeup table.

* A piece of business or dialogue often repeated. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.