The Circus, City Lights

I can think of only one reason to avoid seeing a movie. That would be to have either the good sense or the arrogance to know exactly what a film is going to deliver, and then to decide that it could only be a waste of time experiencing what you believe you already know. This is as true for avoiding canon as it is for skipping The Happening.

For this reason only, I can understand why I was unaware of the actual power of Chaplin as a filmmaker. I haven’t so much avoided this director, as I have allowed him to exist as a legend, known only by proxy—through snatches of footage, photographs, spoofs, and descendants—never first-hand. This form of understanding came from the common font. There’s a calm inland sea back there. Chaplin filtered down through decades of reverence.

But to see The Circus or City Lights with a crowd is humbling. The children of 2008, watched over by the children of 1928. The man in white ascends from his pit—pilot of the Wurlitzer. He plays his signature, descends. The film starts and Chaplin is an icon again. Without a break in the laughter we are introduced to a profound intimacy—that cinematic sleight-of-hand as we realise two threads have been created in one motion.

I was lucky enough to see the final shot of City Lights unaware of its standing as ‘the greatest piece of acting ever committed to celluloid’—but it’s not so much the power of a singular piece of acting as it is the power of a final note in an impeccable symphony. It is what it is because of what has come before. Perfect cinema, the smile transformed into a wince.