MovieChat Forums > City Lights (1931) Discussion > The ending was a fluke

The ending was a fluke


Nothing should be that perfect. Considering the two leads despised each other it's all the more impressive. Sure Chaplin was a genius but it's hard not to be impressed.

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CITY LIGHTS was probably the most laborious effort for Chaplin, of all his films. I understand it took nearly two years, from intitial production to finally getting the reel in the can.

He did countless retakes, for example, of the scene which is immediately prior to his first encounter with "the Flower Girl" because he was agonizing on how to make it credible for the girl to mistake his Tramp character for a man of wealth, without the Tramp having to outright lie about his true station in life.

All these takes, retakes, editing and re-editing took a lot of time, and a lot of money. If it had not been for the fact that he financed and produced CL independently, no studio of the day would have allowed him to go through all of the time and expense involved for making CL such a nuanced, near-flawless, cinematic masterpiece.




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