Charlie Chaplin and Silent Films: City Lights

Despite pressures stemming from the extreme success of the talkies during the late 1920s, Chaplin decided to make yet another silent film in 1929. This decision resulted in the 1931 release of City Lights. Although the film is unarguably a silent picture, Chaplin includes several sound synchronization effects within it. This is displayed specifically in the opening scene, when the voices of public officials at the unveiling of a city monument are mimicked by kazoo noises. It is also exemplified in the party scene when the Tramp swallows a whistle and ruins the singing act with his hiccups. These two scenes satirize the use of sound in talkies by negating the power and importance of dialogue. Through analyzing this restricted use of sound, this page hopes to reveal how Chaplin manipulated the new medium both in order to make a social statement, and in order to critique it.

In the opening scene Chaplin employs the use of sound for comedic effect in a satire of both the political and the aesthetic uses of speech. The scene involves an unveiling of a public statue complete with speeches by city officials and anthems played by an orchestra. The voices of the speakers are mimicked by kazoo noises. The implementation of this technique clearly bears political significance in the midst of America's Great Depression. It reflects Chaplin's critique of the government's inability, especially under President Hoover, to rectify the economic situation. In his autobiography he describes the situation in these terms, "Conditions had gone from bad to worse...Meanwhile the lugubrious Hoover sat and sulked, because his disastrous economic sophistry of allocating money at the top in the belief that it would percolate down to the common people had failed." (Chaplin, pg.379) Chaplin's juxtaposition of political speech with unintelligible, meaningless jargon, reflects a social reality of America in the 1930s. American's had lost faith in the words of politicians, like Hoover, who failed to deliver effective changes.

Later in the scene, Chaplin makes another gibe at the political element using the music of the orchestra. Although music usually accompanied silent films in the form of a live orchestra, Chaplin used synchronization technology to include the music to City Lights. This allowed him more artistic control of the music, and as a result, he composed the film's score for the first time in his career. This added artistic power manifests itself in the opening scene as Chaplin uses the music of the orchestra to parody American nationalism in the 1930s. As the officials unveil the statue, they are surprised to find the Tramp nestled in its lap asleep. Predictably, this leads to an enormous fiasco with the police scrambling around the monument in an effort to capture him. In an attempt to escape the club-wielding officers, the Tramp ends up speared through the seat of his pants by the statue's immense sword. At this moment, in the heat of the scrambling action, the band sets into "The Star-Spangled Banner."

This instantly changes the mood of the scene as everyone, including the Tramp hanging by the seat of his pants, stops to remove their hats and stand at attention. The music serves as a reminder of the country's ideals, which contrast sharply to the injustices occurring in the scene. Furthermore, these injustices reflect the social reality of the unemployed millions of Americans. The plight of the futile, unemployed Tramp takes on a specific relationship to the status of an entire American generation.

Chaplin's use of sound in this scene is also an attack on the talkies in that although he employs the medium with adept skill, he omits the inclusion of dialogue. In the place of dialogue, Chaplin includes the satirical buzzing of a kazoo. This installment minimizes the importance of speech by comparing it to, like the words of the politicians, meaningless noise. As Jean-Loup Bourget notes, "Like politics, talkies are capable of producing no more that a lisping, lifeless, meaningless tongue." (Nysenholc, pg.3) This sort of assault on the talkies is repeated in the party scene later in the film.

In the party scene, the Tramp swallows a whistle by accident just before a guest is to perform an all-singing number. This induces the Tramp to erupt in an unstoppable series of whistling hiccups. The noisy distraction proves to much for the singer, and the Tramp is forced to go outside where the sound of the whistle hails a taxi, and then a pack of stray dogs who enter and ruin the party. Again, in the words of Bourget, "human speech is silenced by a sound gag." (Nysenholc, pg.3) The meaningless sound of the whistle in combination with the Tramp's ingenious pantomime subdues the words of the singer. In this way, Chaplin turns the technique of synchronization against the talkies by proving that he can manipulate sound to accompany his own "silent" brand of comedy. [Back]