In January 1931 Charles Spencer Chaplin works in what will become one of the best films directed and interpreted by the Director and actor, City Lights. The film seems to overshadow than masterpieces entered the pantheon of world filmography Modern Times and The great dictator, shows they consecrated the immortality of Chaplin. However, is precisely the movie that you do not expect, City Lights, to tell you the story of Charlie, and it is in this film that he mostly acknowledges.
The story tells of a blind girl who one day, down the street, meet a man, "the tramp", She believes to be an aristocrat; "the tramp" falls for a young girl, with that comes an intense friendship, and tries in every way to raise funds so that she could operate. The tramp meets a very rich man who overnight, When you're drunk, accepts as a friend the "tramp", While by day, sober, the divorces. In weird ways Charlot manages to find the money and the girl, through the operation, will regain sight; the two will surely cross once again and the young will recognize from his hands the "vagabond" she finds out so don't be rich. With this story, Chaplin is told. First of all the contrast between wealth and poverty. He was a poor boy and lived in one of the most degraded of London, become one of the world's richest people and uses for his films, like his character, a poor tramp dressed in rags, but who always wears a tie as a sign of dignity. Secondly the relationship with his mother, the most important person in her life. Hannah Hill suffered from lifelong mental illness and the young Chaplin, not having the money to make her treat, He was forced to have her committed to an asylum; only several years later and achieved success could have the money you need for essential care, but she unfortunately not healed. Finally, the relationship with the girl, which once discovered that he is not the aristocrat who she imagined abandons him to his fate, by vagabond precisely, Although he did understand all her love; surface sign that wealth is one of the ways that they can lead more easily to love. Chaplin once again abandoned by yet another woman leaves with her limping walk step open, with stick and hat to be his companion. Although the film is dumb, the emotions he evokes are intense: the close-ups on the faces and on the looks of the actor and the girl tell the story more than it can make words, they almost seem inappropriate and out of place, almost will ruin the harmony of the silence of those looks. The final scene where the Tramp and the young are hand in hand and look in your eyes, It's one of those scenes that would stop in time, print, framing and hanging in our hearts because there's all the beauty, the greatness, the tenderness, love and the emotion of the tramp, by Chaplin and our.
Roberto Rossetti
