Movie Night: City Lights
Just reflecting on Movie Night with brijeana . We watched City Lights by Charlie Chaplin, one of the original movie auteurs.
It was charming and funny and sad.
And it had one of the best endings that I have seen in a long time in a movie. It ended properly, on a happy note, but fully aware of the impossibilities of anything more between its protagonists. Nothing forced and nothing out of character for the hero and heroine. And the realization that Happily Ever After might not be together. Movies don't acknowledge that anymore, particularly the romantic ones.
And there was a moment in the movie, when the heroine was in despair and Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp reminds her that tomorrow, the birds will sing. There will be hope.
Made me think of Shakespeare's 29th Sonnet:
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Those birds do sing.
Mr. Chaplin is not a sentimentalist. And this sort of surprised me. I don't know why. I've seen some Mary Pickford movies and she is no sentimentalist either. Neither one goes for cheap tears.
Click to viewIt was charming and funny and sad.
And it had one of the best endings that I have seen in a long time in a movie. It ended properly, on a happy note, but fully aware of the impossibilities of anything more between its protagonists. Nothing forced and nothing out of character for the hero and heroine. And the realization that Happily Ever After might not be together. Movies don't acknowledge that anymore, particularly the romantic ones.
And there was a moment in the movie, when the heroine was in despair and Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp reminds her that tomorrow, the birds will sing. There will be hope.
Made me think of Shakespeare's 29th Sonnet:
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Those birds do sing.
Mr. Chaplin is not a sentimentalist. And this sort of surprised me. I don't know why. I've seen some Mary Pickford movies and she is no sentimentalist either. Neither one goes for cheap tears.