City Lights (1931)
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl. His on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor.
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What critics compared City Lights to
As such, "WALLâ?¢E" recalls the physical humor and poetry of silent comedies, specifically those of Charlie Chaplin -- "City Lights" for the romance, "Modern Times" for the satire, maybe?
Director-screenwriter Andrew Stanton and his Pixar legions have referenced such films as "City Lights" and "Modern Times" and "The Navigator," not simply as a film school exercise but to increase the sentimental resonance of the story and situate it among the classics.
Bergman has stated numerous times that he doesn't believe in God, but Winter Light's climax (where Ericsson, in Märta's company, begins his evening sermon before an otherwise empty church, in a nonetheless beatific close-up that parallels the final image of Chaplin's titularly similar City Lights) suggests that the director does believe in the essential goodness of the human spirit, the soulful desire to carry on with our many rituals of existence because of the knowledge that somehow, some way, our actions always manage to touch and to inspire at least one other.
Sing and a mute street vendor develop a relationship that recalls Chaplin’s Little Tramp and the blind flower girl in CITY LIGHTS.
The movie refers glancingly to dozens of Hollywood classics, from West Side Story to City Lights, but at heart it is a debt of honor richly paid by Stephen Chow to his martial-arts forebears and to the traditions that shaped his sensibility.
The sort of pandering that children’s films are often prone to—the ear-toothbrush sequence in the first movie, for instance—has largely been replaced by jokes that are charming for charming’s sake, and the references, which range from Chaplin’s City Lights to Sondheim’s Follies , are lovely even if the specifics may fly over younger viewers’ heads.
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An irascible bully who proves to have a heart of gold, Pacino's character seems manufactured by a computer programmed with box-office grosses, and it's disheartening to find a movie that professes to take a stand on behalf of personal integrity ripping off Chaplin's theme song from City Lights without credit to generate some of its pathos.
From its magnificent “Rhapsody in Blue” opening to its City Lights-inspired ending, it’s Allen’s most perfect blend of comedy and drama.
The list of movies that feature blind characters is long: Charlie Chaplin's 1931 "City Lights," "Butterflies Are Free" (1972), "Jennifer 8" (1992), "Scent of a Woman" (1992) and the 2000 "Dancer in the Dark" are just a few that come to mind.
Although released in 1931, four years after The Jazz Singer kicked down the door for sound films, City Lights is still considered the last great film of the silent era.
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One early tableau from Norma’s childhood features her mother Gladys (Julianne Nicholson) in the background, framed through a latticed door as she plays the piano while, in the foreground, a faded poster of Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights” flaps on the wall.
She seems to spend most nights sitting next to her still-grieving father as he learns English by watching old classic movies like Casablanca and Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights.