City Lights – The Movie and Music

Music in film can sometimes feel an afterthought in modern movies. There are exceptions, but most of the time it feels like the music is an afterthought – the movie is made and then the music is written to match whatever occurs on screen. This was the challenge tackled by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra; to make music the main attraction, the reason for attending, a character in and of itself.

Beautifully accomplished and insightfully executed, the symphony inspires the audience to take a new look at the role music serves in film and see City Lights illuminated by the eyes of Principal Pops Conductor Christopher Confessore.

When Charlie Chaplin started making City Lights, he already possessed complete creative control over every process of the film (producer, director, lead actor and musical composer). The story is fairly straight forward, possessing occasional arbitrary scenes inserted for comedy. Chaplin’s flagship character, the Tramp, falls in love with the blind Flower Girl and then he uses his little amount of money to maintain the perception that he is rich.

It’s at this stage that we can see Chaplin’s hand shine. Chaplin decides the Flower Girl’s music needs to be soft and romantic – so we hear the violins beautifully offer their interpretation of the Flower Girl through the Tramp’s eyes. In contemporary cinema, most of the time, a musical composer watches the whole movie without sound and crafts the score to match the situations. This process adds another hand, another artistic insight to the film. While this can be beautiful and essential to the art of the movie (remember Hans Zimmer in Inception), City Lights allows the whole film to be through Chaplin’s eyes. And since he is also the protagonist, the audience experiences the film through the Tramp.

The music, therefore, is an expression of Chaplin’s will, the heartbeat for the Tramp. The audience hears the soul of the character. After he purchases a flower from the blind Flower Girl, she hears a car door shut and tries to give him change. She can’t see that the car door closing was someone else. She also can’t see the Tramp looking reverently at her. Her vulnerability and loneliness don’t affect the music, which continues softly and elegantly. Despite such an expression of powerless kindness, the music tells us that the Tramp doesn’t feel pity, but admiration. The Tramp is touched by her beauty and content to sit in the corner watching her. The complexity of emotions, between the audience’s instinctive compassion and the Tramp’s internal rapture, occurring on the screen is contrasted with such innocent music.

This is why the Alabama Symphony Orchestra playing the music is so artistically powerful. The live symphony amplifies every emotional response originally intended by Chaplin. In one comedic scene, at a party in the house of a millionaire, the Tramp accidently swallows a whistle and can’t stop hiccupping. Each time he hiccups, the whistle blows. A man in a suit stands near the piano and prepares to sing, but can’t get anything out due to the distraction by the Tramp. The symphony is silent except for the whistles. The party guests all stare at the Tramp. The audience keeps waiting for music, or something, to happen to interrupt the awkwardness of silence at a party. We become like the guests - tense, nervously laughing, trying to find a way for it to end. The hiccupping and false starts by the hopeful singer continue for too long – like any joke carried passed the point of humor. Why doesn’t the Tramp go outside sooner? Why does he repetitively look at the woman to his right? And at about the fifteenth whistle, it hits us; each time the symphony sounds the whistle, we see each sharp hiccup as a note on sheet music. The hiccups aren’t arbitrary, but occurring exactly as the music demands.

Then an epiphany hits the audience – the whole movie looks like a symphony; each scene a movement. The comedy scenes that repeat themselves over and over again are Chaplin manifesting repeat signs from sheet music into a physical expression. And everything can be seen musically: the boxing dance, the drunk driving, the yarn pulled from his clothes, him saving the suicidal millionaire. The profound pairing of mediums illuminates how close a relationship film and music can hold, and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra has wonderfully demonstrated this effect. If the film is watched standalone, or without an orchestra, how could anyone see this marriage of art?

Take a look at City Lights and try to understand how the whole film looks like music – listen to the visuals and hear the characters expressing notes in their smiles and steps. And as the awkward and shy Tramp stupidly smiles with the flower near his mouth at the very end, hold in your heart the movie’s crescendo to this exact point. The climax and crescendo are actually the same, fused together by complimentary flutters of artistic inspiration. Hear how relieved and happy he is that the flower girl loves him in his ragged clothes - at her new gaze piercing through the fog of the whole experience. And while the audience may think they’re watching love bloom, they’re actually hearing it.

Originally posted at Arts in Alabama

On Amazon at City Lights: The Chaplin Collection (Two-Disc Special Edition)