160-528: City Lights is a 1931 American synchronized sound romantic comedy-drama film written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin . While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects. The story follows the misadventures of Chaplin's Tramp as he falls in love with a blind girl ( Virginia Cherrill ) and develops a turbulent friendship with an alcoholic millionaire ( Harry Myers ). Although talking pictures (or films with recorded dialogue) were on
320-475: A Pathé -Natan film, it is generally regarded as the initial French feature talkie, though it was shot, like Blackmail , at the Elstree studio , just outside London. The production company had contracted with RCA Photophone and Britain then had the nearest facility with the system. The Braunberger-Richebé talkie La Route est belle ( The Road Is Fine ), also shot at Elstree, followed a few weeks later. Before
480-474: A leitmotif for the blind flower girl is the song " La Violetera " ("Who'll Buy my Violets") from Spanish composer José Padilla . Chaplin was unable to secure the original song performer, Raquel Meller , in the lead role, but used her song anyway as a major theme. Chaplin lost a lawsuit to Padilla (which took place in Paris, where Padilla lived) for not crediting him. Some modern editions released for video include
640-433: A leitmotif for the blind flower girl, is the song " La Violetera " ("Who'll Buy my Violets") from Spanish composer José Padilla . Chaplin lost a lawsuit to Padilla for not crediting him. City Lights was immediately successful upon release on March 7, 1931, with positive reviews and worldwide rentals of more than $ 4 million. Today, many critics consider it not only the highest accomplishment of Chaplin's career, but one of
800-437: A silent film . The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures became commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using
960-444: A "musical." (Griffith's Dream Street had essentially been a "goat gland.") Expectations swiftly changed, and the sound "fad" of 1927 became standard procedure by 1929. In February 1929, sixteen months after The Jazz Singer' s debut, Columbia Pictures became the last of the eight studios that would be known as " majors " during Hollywood's Golden Age to release its first part-talking feature, The Lone Wolf's Daughter . In late May,
1120-444: A 2008 poll of 78 film historians and critics organized by Claude-Jean Philippe . In the 2012 Sight & Sound polls, it was ranked the 50th-greatest film ever made in the critics' poll and 30th in the directors' poll. In the earlier 2002 version of the list the film ranked 45th among critics and 19th among directors. In 2015, City Lights ranked 18th on BBC 's "100 Greatest American Films" list, voted on by film critics from around
1280-518: A Warner Bros. movie. This second Jolson screen smash demonstrated the movie musical's ability to turn a song into a national hit: inside of nine months, the Jolson number " Sonny Boy " had racked up 2 million record and 1.25 million sheet music sales. September 1928 also saw the release of Paul Terry 's Dinner Time , among the first animated cartoons produced with synchronized sound. Soon after he saw it, Walt Disney released his first sound picture,
1440-464: A Western Electric sound-on-film system. None of these pictures made much impact. The first successful European dramatic talkie was the all-British Blackmail . Directed by twenty-nine-year-old Alfred Hitchcock , the movie had its London debut June 21, 1929. Originally shot as a silent, Blackmail was restaged to include dialogue sequences, along with a score and sound effects, before its premiere. A British International Pictures (BIP) production, it
1600-541: A contract with Warner Brothers and W. J. Rich, a financier, giving them an exclusive license for recording and reproducing sound pictures under the Western Electric system. To exploit this license the Vitaphone Corporation was organized with Samuel L. Warner as its president. Vitaphone , as this system was now called, was publicly introduced on August 6, 1926, with the premiere of Don Juan ;
1760-628: A demonstration of the Western Electric sound-on-disc system and was sufficiently impressed to persuade his brothers to agree to experiment with using this system at New York City's Vitagraph Studios , which they had recently purchased. The tests were convincing to the Warner Brothers, if not to the executives of some other picture companies who witnessed them. Consequently, in April 1926 the Western Electric Company entered into
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#17327806790601920-457: A fake bout; they will "go easy" on each other and split the prize money. But the boxer flees on learning he is about to be arrested and is replaced by a no-nonsense fighter who knocks the Tramp out despite the Tramp's creative and nimble efforts to keep out of reach. The Tramp encounters the drunken millionaire a third time and is again invited to the mansion. The Tramp relates the girl's plight and
2080-681: A few songs performed by Richard Tauber . The movie was made with the sound-on-film system controlled by the German-Dutch firm Tobis , corporate heirs to the Tri-Ergon concern. With an eye toward commanding the emerging European market for sound film, Tobis entered into a compact with its chief competitor, Klangfilm, a joint subsidiary of Germany's two leading electrical manufacturers. Early in 1929, Tobis and Klangfilm began comarketing their recording and playback technologies. As ERPI began to wire theaters around Europe, Tobis-Klangfilm claimed that
2240-523: A furious pace on sophisticated sound amplification technology that would allow recordings to be played back over loudspeakers at theater-filling volume. The new moving-coil speaker system was installed in New York's Warners Theatre at the end of July and its patent submission, for what Western Electric called the No. 555 Receiver, was filed on August 4, just two days before the premiere of Don Juan . Late in
2400-456: A generation. The primary issue was synchronization: pictures and sound were recorded and played back by separate devices, which were difficult to start and maintain in tandem. Sufficient playback volume was also hard to achieve. While motion picture projectors soon allowed film to be shown to large theater audiences, audio technology before the development of electric amplification could not project satisfactorily to fill large spaces. Finally, there
2560-486: A good time in expensive clubs before dropping him back off at the dump, so when he woke up, the Tramp would not know if it was real or a dream. This was rewritten into a millionaire who is the Tramp's friend when drunk but does not recognize him when sober. Chaplin officially began pre-production of the film in May 1928 and hired Australian art director Henry Clive to design the sets that summer. Chaplin eventually cast Clive in
2720-413: A gradual transition to sound—allowing the studios to spread out the capital costs of conversion and their directors and technical crews time to become familiar with the new technology. The Mandarin-language Gēnǚ hóng mǔdān ( 歌 女 紅 牡 丹 , Singsong Girl Red Peony ), starring Butterfly Wu, premiered as China's first feature talkie in 1930. By February of that year, production was apparently completed on
2880-462: A large section of the industry still saw the silent as a viable artistic and commercial prospect till about 1935." The situation was particularly acute in the Soviet Union; as of May 1933, fewer than one out of every hundred film projectors in the country was as yet equipped for sound. During the 1920s and 1930s, Japan was one of the world's two largest producers of motion pictures, along with
3040-406: A light valve, a thin ribbon of sensitive metal over a tiny slit. The sound reaching this ribbon would be converted into light by the shivering of the diaphragm, focusing the resulting light waves through the slit, where it would be photographed on the side of the film, on a strip about a tenth of an inch wide. In 1908, Lauste purchased a photographophone from Ruhmer, with the intention of perfecting
3200-400: A look of puzzlement as she recognizes the touch of his hand. She runs her fingers along his arm, his shoulder, his lapels, then gasps, "You?" The Tramp nods and asks, "You can see now?" The girl replies, "Yes, I can see now", and presses his hand to her heart with a tearful smile. Relieved and elated, the Tramp smiles back. Uncredited Cast Chaplin's feature The Circus , released in 1928,
3360-684: A major Hollywood studio. The Jazz Singer had its European sound premiere at the Piccadilly Theatre in London on September 27, 1928. According to film historian Rachael Low , "Many in the industry realized at once that a change to sound production was inevitable." On January 16, 1929, the first European feature film with a synchronized vocal performance and recorded score premiered: the German production Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame ( I Kiss Your Hand, Madame ). Dialogueless, it contains only
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#17327806790603520-496: A new recording by Carl Davis . Two weeks prior to the premiere, Chaplin decided to have an unpublicized preview at Los Angeles' Tower Theatre . It went poorly, attracting a small and unenthusiastic crowd. Better results were seen at the gala premiere on January 30, 1931, at the Los Angeles Theater . Albert Einstein and his wife were the guests of honor, and the film received a standing ovation. It next premiered at
3680-568: A number of companies were making progress with systems that recorded movie sound on phonograph discs. In sound-on-disc technology from the era, a phonograph turntable is connected by a mechanical interlock to a specially modified film projector , allowing for synchronization. In 1921, the Photokinema sound-on-disc system developed by Orlando Kellum was employed to add synchronized sound sequences to D. W. Griffith 's failed silent film Dream Street . A love song, performed by star Ralph Graves,
3840-427: A reporter that "I really didn't write it down. I la-laed and Arthur Johnson wrote it down, and I wish you would give him credit because he did a very good job. It is all simple music, you know, in keeping with my character." The intention was to have a score that would translate the characters' emotions through its melodies. The score was recorded in five days with musical arranger Alfred Newman . The main theme used as
4000-485: A screen. The phonograph was connected by an intricate arrangement of pulleys to the film projector, allowing—under ideal conditions—for synchronization. However, conditions were rarely ideal, and the new, improved Kinetophone was retired after little more than a year. By the mid-1910s, the groundswell in commercial sound motion picture exhibition had subsided. Beginning in 1914, The Photo-Drama of Creation , promoting Jehovah's Witnesses ' conception of humankind's genesis,
4160-399: A sound version of The Devil's Playground , arguably qualifying it as the first Australian talking motion picture; however, the May press screening of Commonwealth Film Contest prizewinner Fellers is the first verifiable public exhibition of an Australian talkie. In September 1930, a song performed by Indian star Sulochana , excerpted from the silent feature Madhuri (1928), was released as
4320-520: A stick that was stuck in a grate. The scene included a young Charles Lederer ; Chaplin later praised the scene, but insisted that it needed to be cut. He then continued filming the scenes with the millionaire until September 29, 1929. In November, Chaplin began working with Cherrill again in some of the Flower Girl's less dramatic scenes. While waiting for her scenes for several months, Cherrill had become bored and openly complained to Chaplin. During
4480-481: A subsidiary of British Talking Pictures, which purchased the primary Phonofilm assets. By the end of 1930, the Phonofilm business would be liquidated. In Europe, others were also working on the development of sound-on-film. In 1919, the same year that DeForest received his first patents in the field, three German inventors, Josef Engl (1893–1942), Hans Vogt (1890–1979), and Joseph Massolle (1889–1957), patented
4640-576: A synchronized-sound short, the country's first. The following year, Ardeshir Irani directed the first Indian talking feature, the Hindi-Urdu Alam Ara , and produced Kalidas , primarily in Tamil with some Telugu. Nineteen-thirty-one also saw the first Bengali-language film, Jamai Sasthi , and the first movie fully spoken in Telugu, Bhakta Prahlada . In 1932, Ayodhyecha Raja became
4800-559: A system that recorded sound on a separate filmstrip running parallel with the image reel. Gaumont licensed the technology and briefly put it to commercial use under the name Cinéphone. US competition eclipsed Phonofilm. By September 1925, De Forest and Case's working arrangement had fallen through. The following July, Case joined Fox Film , Hollywood's third largest studio , to found the Fox-Case Corporation. The system developed by Case and his assistant, Earl Sponable, given
4960-501: A talkie (although it had only limited sound sequences) was The Jazz Singer , which premiered on October 6, 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone , which was at the time the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would soon become the standard for talking pictures. By the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon. In the United States, they helped secure Hollywood's position as one of
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5120-407: A talkie: G'schichten aus der Steiermark ( Stories from Styria ), an Eagle Film–Ottoton Film production. On September 30, the first entirely German-made feature-length dramatic talkie, Das Land ohne Frauen ( Land Without Women ), premiered. A Tobis Filmkunst production, about one-quarter of the movie contained dialogue, which was strictly segregated from the special effects and music. The response
5280-515: A third of all movies produced in Japan were shot without dialogue. The enduring popularity of the silent medium in Japanese cinema owed in great part to the tradition of the benshi , a live narrator who performed as accompaniment to a film screening. As director Akira Kurosawa later described, the benshi "not only recounted the plot of the films, they enhanced the emotional content by performing
5440-415: A variety of ways. An increasing number of motion picture systems relied on gramophone records —known as sound-on-disc technology. The records themselves were often referred to as "Berliner discs", after one of the primary inventors in the field, German-American Emile Berliner . In 1902, Léon Gaumont demonstrated his sound-on-disc Chronophone, involving an electrical connection he had recently patented, to
5600-517: Is a story about a Viennese doctor's blindness cure. "Wonderful, then I'll be able to see you", says the girl – and the Tramp is struck by what may happen should she gain her sight and discover that he is not the wealthy man she imagines. He also finds an eviction notice the girl's grandmother has hidden. As he leaves, he promises the girl that he will pay the rent. The Tramp returns to work to find himself fired – he has been late once too often. A boxer convinces him to fight in
5760-795: Is based in the denial of the real world around it. When the film premiered, Chaplin was much older, he was in the midst of another round of legal battles with former spouse Lita Grey, and the economic and political climate of the world had changed. Chaplin uses the Girl's blindness to remind the Tramp of the precarious nature of romanticism in the real world, as she unknowingly assaults him multiple times. Film.com critic Eric D. Snider said that by 1931, most Hollywood filmmakers either embraced sound films, resigned themselves to their inevitability, or just gave up making movies, yet Chaplin held firm with his vision in this project. He also noted that few in Hollywood had
5920-460: Is blind; he is instantly smitten. The girl mistakes the Tramp for a wealthy man when the door of a chauffeured automobile slams shut as he departs. That evening the Tramp saves a drunken millionaire from suicide. The millionaire takes the Tramp ;– his new best friend – back to his mansion for champagne, then (after another abortive suicide attempt) out for a night on
6080-428: Is flattered and giggles to her employee, "I've made a conquest!" Via pantomime through the glass she offers him a fresh flower (to replace the crushed one he took from the gutter) and a coin. Suddenly embarrassed, the Tramp begins to shuffle away, but the girl steps to the shop door and again offers the flower, which he shyly accepts. She takes his hand and presses the coin into it, then abruptly stops; her smile turns to
6240-547: The American Film Institute ranked it 11th on its list of the best American films ever made . In 1949, the critic James Agee called the film's final scene "the greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid". Citizens and dignitaries are assembled for the unveiling of a new monument to "Peace and Prosperity". After droning speeches, the veil is lifted to reveal the Little Tramp asleep in
6400-703: The French Photographic Society . Four years later, Gaumont introduced the Elgéphone, a compressed-air amplification system based on the Auxetophone, developed by British inventors Horace Short and Charles Parsons. Despite high expectations, Gaumont's sound innovations had only limited commercial success. Despite some improvements, they still did not satisfactorily address the three basic issues with sound film and were expensive as well. For some years, American inventor E. E. Norton's Cameraphone
6560-566: The Kinetophone in 1895, but individual, cabinet viewing of motion pictures was soon to be outmoded by successes in film projection. In 1899, a projected sound-film system known as Cinemacrophonograph or Phonorama, based primarily on the work of Swiss-born inventor François Dussaud, was exhibited in Paris; similar to the Kinetophone, the system required individual use of earphones. An improved cylinder-based system, Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre,
City Lights - Misplaced Pages Continue
6720-463: The Mickey Mouse short Steamboat Willie . Over the course of 1928, as Warner Bros. began to rake in huge profits due to the popularity of its sound films , the other studios quickened the pace of their conversion to the new technology. Paramount, the industry leader, put out its first talkie in late September, Beggars of Life ; though it had just a few lines of dialogue, it demonstrated
6880-542: The Motion Picture Association of America , all with live-recorded sound. These were the first true sound films exhibited by a Hollywood studio. Warner Bros.' The Better 'Ole , technically similar to Don Juan , followed in October. Sound-on-film would ultimately win out over sound-on-disc because of a number of fundamental technical advantages: Nonetheless, in the early years, sound-on-disc had
7040-579: The Tri-Ergon sound system. On September 17, 1922, the Tri-Ergon group gave a public screening of sound-on-film productions—including a dramatic talkie, Der Brandstifter ( The Arsonist ) —before an invited audience at the Alhambra Kino in Berlin. By the end of the decade, Tri-Ergon would be the dominant European sound system. In 1923, two Danish engineers, Axel Petersen and Arnold Poulsen, patented
7200-619: The greatest films of all time . Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance believes " City Lights is not only Charles Chaplin's masterpiece; it is an act of defiance" as it premiered four years into the era of sound films which began with the premiere of The Jazz Singer (1927) . In 1991, the Library of Congress selected City Lights for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2007,
7360-469: The 1930s most theaters had gotten rid of their orchestras. Many of his critics claimed he was doing it to grab more credit. Chaplin, whose parents and many members of the Chaplin family were musicians, was struggling with the professional musicians he hired and took it upon himself to compose the score. It was written in six weeks with Arthur Johnston and included over one hundred musical cues. Chaplin told
7520-528: The Cohan, Chaplin went on a sixteen-day world tour between February and March 1931, starting with a premiere at London's Dominion Theatre on February 27. The film was enthusiastically received by Depression-era audiences, earning $ 4.25 million in worldwide rentals during its initial release. Reviews were mostly positive. A film critic for the Los Angeles Examiner said that "not since I reviewed
7680-582: The Gallows ). Several European nations with minor positions in the field also produced their first talking pictures—Belgium (in French), Denmark, Greece, and Romania. The Soviet Union's robust film industry came out with its first sound features in December 1930: Dziga Vertov 's nonfiction Enthusiasm had an experimental, dialogueless soundtrack; Abram Room 's documentary Plan velikikh rabot ( The Plan of
7840-486: The George M. Cohan Theater in New York where Chaplin closely supervised the release, spending the day doing interviews, and previously spending $ 60,000 on the advertising, as he was frustrated with what UA's publicists had come up with. Chaplin demanded half of the total gross, and considering audiences would be more attracted by the film itself than its technology, he demanded higher ticket prices compared to talkies. Chaplin
8000-747: The Great Works ) had music and spoken voiceovers. Both were made with locally developed sound-on-film systems, two of the two hundred or so movie sound systems then available somewhere in the world. In June 1931, the Nikolai Ekk drama Putevka v zhizn ( The Road to Life or A Start in Life ), premiered as the Soviet Union's first true talking picture. Throughout much of Europe, conversion of exhibition venues lagged well behind production capacity, requiring talkies to be produced in parallel silent versions or simply shown without sound in many places. While
8160-459: The Mouse (31 minutes of dialogue) in May. On July 6, 1928, the first all-talking feature, Lights of New York , premiered. The film cost Warner Bros. only $ 23,000 to produce, but grossed $ 1,252,000, a record rate of return surpassing 5,000%. In September, the studio released another Al Jolson part-talking picture, The Singing Fool , which more than doubled The Jazz Singer' s earnings record for
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#17327806790608320-487: The Paris studios were fully sound-equipped—a process that stretched well into 1930—a number of other early French talkies were shot in Germany. The first all-talking German feature, Atlantik , had premiered in Berlin on October 28. Yet another Elstree-made movie, it was rather less German at heart than Les Trois masques and La Route est belle were French; a BIP production with a British scenarist and German director, it
8480-533: The Royal Hungarian Patent Court in 1918; the patent award was published four years later. Whether sound was captured on cylinder, disc, or film, none of the available technology was adequate for big-league commercial purposes, and for many years the heads of the major Hollywood film studios saw little benefit in producing sound motion pictures. A number of technological developments contributed to making sound cinema commercially viable by
8640-429: The Tramp is released. He goes to the girl's customary street corner but she is not there. We learn that the girl – her sight restored – now runs a busy flower shop with her grandmother. But she has not forgotten her mysterious benefactor, whom she imagines to be rich and handsome: when an elegant young man enters the shop she wonders for a moment whether "he" has returned. The Tramp happens by
8800-403: The Tramp returns to the mansion, where the millionaire – now sober – does not remember him and throws him out. Later that day, the millionaire is once again intoxicated and, seeing the Tramp on the street, invites him home for a lavish party. But the next morning history repeats itself: the millionaire is again sober and the Tramp is again out on his ear. Finding that
8960-444: The United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2007, the American Film Institute 's tenth anniversary edition of 100 Years... 100 Movies ranked City Lights as the 11th greatest American film of all time, an improvement over the 76th position on the original list. AFI also chose the film as the best romantic comedy of American cinema in 2008's "10 Top 10" . The Tramp
9120-417: The United States. By 1930, only half of the theaters had been wired for sound. Initially, all ERPI-wired theaters were made Vitaphone-compatible; most were equipped to project Movietone reels as well. However, even with access to both technologies, most of the Hollywood companies remained slow to produce talking features of their own. No studio besides Warner Bros. released even a part-talking feature until
9280-614: The United States. Though the country's film industry was among the first to produce both sound and talking features, the full changeover to sound proceeded much more slowly than in the West. It appears that the first Japanese sound film, Reimai ( Dawn ), was made in 1926 with the De Forest Phonofilm system. Using the sound-on-disc Minatoki system, the leading Nikkatsu studio produced a pair of talkies in 1929: Taii no musume ( The Captain's Daughter ) and Furusato ( Hometown ),
9440-461: The Vitaphone system, most of the film does not contain live-recorded audio, relying, like Sunrise and Don Juan , on a score and effects. When the movie's star, Al Jolson , sings, however, the film shifts to sound recorded on the set, including both his musical performances and two scenes with ad-libbed speech—one of Jolson's character, Jakie Rabinowitz (Jack Robin), addressing a cabaret audience;
9600-649: The Western Electric system infringed on the Tri-Ergon patents, stalling the introduction of American technology in many places. Just as RCA had entered the movie business to maximize its recording system's value, Tobis also established its own production operations. During 1929, most of the major European filmmaking countries began joining Hollywood in the changeover to sound. Many of the trend-setting European talkies were shot abroad as production companies leased studios while their own were being converted or as they deliberately targeted markets speaking different languages. One of Europe's first two feature-length dramatic talkies
9760-455: The all-talking Niebezpieczny romans ( Dangerous Love Affair ) in October. In Italy, whose once vibrant film industry had become moribund by the late 1920s, the first talkie, La Canzone dell'amore ( The Song of Love ), also came out in October; within two years, Italian cinema would be enjoying a revival. The first movie spoken in Czech debuted in 1930 as well, Tonka Šibenice ( Tonka of
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#17327806790609920-476: The banner of De Forest Phonofilms . The set included the 11-minute short film From far Seville starring Concha Piquer . In 2010, a copy of the tape was found in the U.S. Library of Congress , where it is currently preserved. Critics attending the event praised the novelty but not the sound quality which received negative reviews in general. That June, De Forest entered into an extended legal battle with an employee, Freeman Harrison Owens , for title to one of
10080-612: The best criticism and all the notable filmmakers who have singled out City Lights as their favorite Chaplin film throughout the decades in the Criterion Collection audio commentary track for the film. Vance has written that among all the praise afforded the film can be added that "City Lights also holds the distinction of being Chaplin's own favorite of all his films." French experimental musician and film critic Michel Chion has written an analysis of City Lights , published as Les Lumières de la ville . Slavoj Žižek used
10240-421: The burglars. In the late spring of 1930, Chaplin shot the last major comedy sequence: the boxing match. Chaplin hired Keystone actor Hank Mann to play the Tramp's opponent. Chaplin took four days to rehearse, and then six to shoot it, between June 23 and 30. Chaplin was initially nervous over the attendance for this scene so he invited his friends to be extras. Over 100 extras were present. Chaplin's performance in
10400-417: The camera for particular shots. The necessity of staying within range of still microphones meant that actors also often had to limit their movements unnaturally. Show Girl in Hollywood (1930), from First National Pictures (which Warner Bros. had taken control of thanks to its profitable adventure into sound), gives a behind-the-scenes look at some of the techniques involved in shooting early talkies. Several of
10560-460: The center of the entire film. For a subplot, Chaplin first considered a character even lower on the social scale, a black newsboy. Eventually he opted for a drunken millionaire, a character previously used in the 1921 short The Idle Class . The millionaire plot was based on an old idea Chaplin had for a short in which two millionaires pick up the Little Tramp from the city dump and show him
10720-434: The chance to work with him. After a series of poor auditions from other actresses, Chaplin eventually invited her to do a screen test. She was the first actress to subtly and convincingly act blind on camera due to her near-sightedness, and Cherrill signed a contract on November 1, 1928. Filming for City Lights officially began on December 27, 1928, after Chaplin and Carr had worked on the script for almost an entire year. On
10880-467: The clout to make a silent film at that late date, let alone do it well. One reason was that Chaplin knew the Tramp could not be adapted to talking movies and still work. Several well-known directors have praised City Lights . Orson Welles said it was his favorite film. In a 1963 interview in the American magazine Cinema , Stanley Kubrick rated City Lights as fifth among his top ten films. In 1972,
11040-639: The critic James Agee wrote in Life magazine, that the final scene was the "greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid." Richard Meryman called the final scene one of the greatest moments in film history. Charles Silver, Curator of Film at the Museum of Modern Art , stated that the film is so highly regarded because it brought forth a new level of lyrical romanticism that had not appeared in Chaplin's earlier works. He adds that like all romanticism, it
11200-712: The crucial Phonofilm patents. Although De Forest ultimately won the case in the courts, Owens is today recognized as a central innovator in the field. The following year, De Forest's studio released the first commercial dramatic film shot as a talking picture—the two-reeler Love's Old Sweet Song , directed by J. Searle Dawley and featuring Una Merkel . However, phonofilm's stock in trade was not original dramas but celebrity documentaries, popular music acts, and comedy performances. President Calvin Coolidge , opera singer Abbie Mitchell , and vaudeville stars such as Phil Baker , Ben Bernie , Eddie Cantor and Oscar Levant appeared in
11360-531: The device into a commercial product. Though sound-on-film would eventually become the universal standard for synchronized sound cinema, Lauste never successfully exploited his innovations, which came to an effective dead end. In 1914, Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt was granted German patent 309,536 for his sound-on-film work; that same year, he apparently demonstrated a film made with the process to an audience of scientists in Berlin. Hungarian engineer Denes Mihaly submitted his sound-on-film Projectofon concept to
11520-404: The edge over sound-on-film in two substantial ways: As sound-on-film technology improved, both of these disadvantages were overcome. The third crucial set of innovations marked a major step forward in both the live recording of sound and its effective playback: In 1913, Western Electric , the manufacturing division of AT&T, acquired the rights to the de Forest audion , the forerunner of
11680-435: The film "a good gimmick, but that's all it was." Not until May 1928 did the group of four big studios (PDC had dropped out of the alliance), along with United Artists and others, sign with ERPI for conversion of production facilities and theaters for sound film. It was a daunting commitment; revamping a single theater cost as much as $ 15,000 (the equivalent of $ 220,000 in 2019), and there were more than 20,000 movie theaters in
11840-474: The film as a primary example in his essay "Why Does a Letter Always Arrive at Its Destination?". Film critic Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four writing the film "contains the slapstick, the pathos, the pantomime, the effortless physical coordination, the melodrama, the bawdiness, the grace, and, of course, the Little Tramp--the character said, at one time, to be
12000-525: The film at number 37 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics. The film was included in Time ' s All-Time 100 best movies list in 2005. In 2006, Premiere issued its list of "The 100 Greatest Performances of all Time", putting Chaplin's performance as "The Tramp" at No. 44. City Lights was ranked seventeenth on Cahiers du cinéma ' s 100 Greatest Films,
12160-434: The film's soundtrack consisted of a musical score and sound effects (including, in a couple of crowd scenes, "wild", nonspecific vocals). Then, on October 6, 1927, Warner Bros.' The Jazz Singer premiered. It was a smash box office success for the mid-level studio, earning a total of $ 2.625 million in the United States and abroad, almost a million dollars more than the previous record for a Warner Bros. film. Produced with
12320-503: The filming of one scene, Cherrill asked Chaplin if she could leave early so that she could go to a hair appointment. Chaplin fired Virginia Cherrill and replaced her with Georgia Hale , Chaplin's co-star in The Gold Rush . Although Chaplin liked her screen test, even he realized he had shot far too much already to reshoot all of the flower girl's scenes. Chaplin also briefly considered sixteen-year-old actress Violet Krauth , but he
12480-545: The firm's pictures. Hollywood remained suspicious, even fearful, of the new technology. As Photoplay editor James Quirk put it in March 1924, "Talking pictures are perfected, says Dr. Lee De Forest. So is castor oil ." De Forest's process continued to be used through 1927 in the United States for dozens of short Phonofilms; in the UK it was employed a few years longer for both shorts and features by British Sound Film Productions,
12640-493: The first Chaplin comedies way back in the two-reel days has Charlie given us such an orgy of laughs." The New York Times reviewer Mordaunt Hall considered it "a film worked out with admirable artistry". Variety declared it was "not Chaplin's best picture" but that certain sequences were "hilarious". The New Yorker wrote that it was "on the order of his other [films], perhaps a little better than any of them" and that it gave an impression "not often—oh, very seldom—found in
12800-525: The first Flower Shop scene with Cherrill. This time, the scene was completed in six days and Chaplin was happy with Cherrill's performance. Chaplin had been shooting the film for a year and was only a little more than half way finished. From March to April 1930, Chaplin shot the scenes inside of the millionaire's house at the Town House on Wilshire Boulevard. He hired Joe Van Meter and Albert Austin, whom he had known since his days working for Fred Karno , as
12960-511: The first all-color, all-talking feature, Warner Bros.' On with the Show! , premiered. Yet most American movie theaters, especially outside of urban areas, were still not equipped for sound: while the number of sound cinemas grew from 100 to 800 between 1928 and 1929, they were still vastly outnumbered by silent theaters, which had actually grown in number as well, from 22,204 to 22,544. The studios, in parallel, were still not entirely convinced of
13120-471: The first commercial motion picture exhibition, he proposed a scheme for sound cinema that would combine his image-casting zoopraxiscope with Edison's recorded-sound technology. No agreement was reached, but within a year Edison commissioned the development of the Kinetoscope , essentially a "peep-show" system, as a visual complement to his cylinder phonograph . The two devices were brought together as
13280-423: The first feature-length movie to employ a synchronized sound system of any type throughout, its soundtrack contained a musical score and added sound effects , but no recorded dialogue—in other words, it had been staged and shot as a silent film. Accompanying Don Juan , however, were eight shorts of musical performances, mostly classical, as well as a four-minute filmed introduction by Will H. Hays , president of
13440-570: The first movie in which Marathi was spoken to be released (though Sant Tukaram was the first to go through the official censorship process); the first Gujarati-language film, Narsimha Mehta , and all-Tamil talkie, Kalava , debuted as well. The next year, Ardeshir Irani produced the first Persian-language talkie, Dukhtar-e-loor . Also in 1933, the first Cantonese-language films were produced in Hong Kong— Sha zai dongfang ( The Idiot's Wedding Night ) and Liang xing ( Conscience ); within two years,
13600-557: The first reported U.S. demonstration of a sound-on-film motion picture to members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers . As with Lauste and Tigerstedt, Tykociner's system would never be taken advantage of commercially; however, De Forest's soon would. On April 15, 1923, at the New York City's Rivoli Theater, the first commercial screening of motion pictures with sound-on-film took place. This would become
13760-531: The front-runners came up with. In May, Warner Bros. sold back its exclusivity rights to ERPI (along with the Fox-Case sublicense) and signed a new royalty contract similar to Fox's for use of Western Electric technology. Fox and Warners pressed forward with sound cinema, moving in different directions both technologically and commercially: Fox moved into newsreels and then scored dramas, while Warners concentrated on talking features. Meanwhile, ERPI sought to corner
13920-420: The fundamental problems caused by the transition to sound were soon solved with new camera casings, known as " blimps ", designed to suppress noise and boom microphones that could be held just out of frame and moved with the actors. In 1931, a major improvement in playback fidelity was introduced: three-way speaker systems in which sound was separated into low, medium, and high frequencies and sent respectively to
14080-411: The future standard. It consisted of a set of short films varying in length and featuring some of the most popular stars of the 1920s (including Eddie Cantor , Harry Richman , Sophie Tucker , and George Jessel among others) doing stage performances such as vaudevilles , musical acts, and speeches which accompanied the screening of the silent feature film Bella Donna . All of them were presented under
14240-412: The girl is not at her usual street-corner, the Tramp goes to her apartment, where he overhears a doctor tell the grandmother that the girl is very ill: "She has a fever and needs careful attention." Determined to help, the Tramp takes a job as a street sweeper . On his lunch break, he brings the girl groceries while her grandmother is out selling flowers. To entertain her he reads a newspaper aloud; in it
14400-403: The great financial and artistic successes of Chaplin's career, and it was his personal favorite of his films. Especially fond of the final scene, he said, "[I]n City Lights just the last scene ... I'm not acting ... Almost apologetic, standing outside myself and looking ... It's a beautiful scene, beautiful, and because it isn't over-acted." The amount of film used for the project
14560-410: The lap of one of the sculpted figures. After several minutes of slapstick, he manages to escape the assembly's wrath to perambulate the city. He rebukes two newsboys who taunt him for his shabbiness, and while coyly admiring a nude statue has a near-fatal encounter with a sidewalk elevator. The Tramp encounters the beautiful flower girl on a street corner and in the course of buying a flower realizes she
14720-476: The late 1920s. Two involved contrasting approaches to synchronized sound reproduction, or playback: In 1919, American inventor Lee De Forest was awarded several patents that would lead to the first optical sound -on-film technology with commercial application. In De Forest's system, the sound track was photographically recorded onto the side of the strip of motion picture film to create a composite, or "married", print. If proper synchronization of sound and picture
14880-456: The latter directed by Kenji Mizoguchi . The rival Shochiku studio began the successful production of sound-on-film talkies in 1931 using a variable-density process called Tsuchibashi. Two years later, however, more than 80 percent of movies made in the country were still silents. Two of the country's leading directors, Mikio Naruse and Yasujirō Ozu , did not make their first sound films until 1935 and 1936, respectively. As late as 1938, over
15040-540: The lines are of varying width.) By October, the FBO-RCA alliance would lead to the creation of Hollywood's newest major studio, RKO Pictures . Meanwhile, Warner Bros. had released three more talkies, all profitable, if not at the level of The Jazz Singer : In March, Tenderloin appeared; it was billed by Warners as the first feature in which characters spoke their parts, though only 15 of its 88 minutes had dialogue. Glorious Betsy followed in April, and The Lion and
15200-481: The local film industry had fully converted to sound. Korea, where pyonsa (or byun-sa ) held a role and status similar to that of the Japanese benshi, in 1935 became the last country with a significant film industry to produce its first talking picture: Chunhyangjeon ( Korean : 춘향전 ; Hanja : 春香傳 ) is based on the seventeenth-century pansori folktale " Chunhyangga ", of which as many as fifteen film versions have been made through 2009. In
15360-439: The low-budget-oriented Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) premiered The Perfect Crime on June 17, 1928, eight months after The Jazz Singer . FBO had come under the effective control of a Western Electric competitor, General Electric 's RCA division, which was looking to market its new sound-on-film system, Photophone . Unlike Fox-Case's Movietone and De Forest's Phonofilm, which were variable-density systems, Photophone
15520-424: The market by signing up the five allied studios. The big sound film sensations of the year all took advantage of preexisting celebrity. On May 20, 1927, at New York City's Roxy Theater , Fox Movietone presented a sound film of the takeoff of Charles Lindbergh 's celebrated flight to Paris, recorded earlier that day. In June, a Fox sound newsreel depicting his return welcomes in New York City and Washington, D.C.,
15680-436: The millionaire gives him money for her operation. Burglars knock the millionaire out and take the rest of his money. The police find the Tramp with the money given to him by the millionaire, who because of the knock on the head does not remember giving it. The Tramp evades the police long enough to get the money to the girl, telling her he will be going away for a time; in due course he is apprehended and imprisoned. Months later
15840-546: The most famous image on earth." He added the film in his Great Movies list. Chaplin's original "Tramp" suit from the film was donated by him to the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles County . City Lights was released as a dual-format Blu-ray and DVD by the Criterion Collection in 2013, both of which include trailers of the film, archival footage from production, and an audio commentary track by Chaplin biographer and scholar Jeffrey Vance , among others. The new cover
16000-407: The movie industry". Celebrated Italian director Federico Fellini often praised this film, and his Nights of Cabiria refers to it. In the 2003 documentary Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin , Woody Allen said it was Chaplin's best picture. Allen is said to have based the final scene of his 1979 film Manhattan on its final scene. Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance has summarized all
16160-413: The movies; an indefinable impression perhaps best described as a quality of charm." On the other hand, Alexander Bakshy of The Nation was highly critical of City Lights , objecting to the silent format and over-sentimentality and describing it as "Chaplin's feeblest". The popularity of City Lights endured, with the film's re-release in 1950 again positively received by audiences and critics. In 1949,
16320-589: The name Movietone , thus became the first viable sound-on-film technology controlled by a Hollywood movie studio. The following year, Fox purchased the North American rights to the Tri-Ergon system, though the company found it inferior to Movietone and virtually impossible to integrate the two different systems to advantage. In 1927, as well, Fox retained the services of Freeman Owens, who had particular expertise in constructing cameras for synch-sound film. Parallel with improvements in sound-on-film technology,
16480-489: The opening scene resembling St. Mark's Church on Kennington Park Road and Chaplin referring to the waterfront set as the Thames Embankment. Chaplin had interviewed several actresses to play the blind flower girl but was unimpressed with them all. While seeing a film shoot with bathing women in a Santa Monica beach, he found a casual acquaintance, Virginia Cherrill . Cherrill waved and asked if she would ever get
16640-403: The other an exchange between him and his mother. The "natural" sounds of the settings were also audible. Though the success of The Jazz Singer was due largely to Jolson, already established as one of U.S. biggest music stars, and its limited use of synchronized sound hardly qualified it as an innovative sound film (let alone the "first"), the movie's profits were proof enough to the industry that
16800-525: The pace of conversion was relatively swift in Britain—with over 60 percent of theaters equipped for sound by the end of 1930, similar to the U.S. figure—in France, by contrast, more than half of theaters nationwide were still projecting in silence by late 1932. According to scholar Colin G. Crisp, "Anxiety about resuscitating the flow of silent films was frequently expressed in the [French] industrial press, and
16960-470: The redubbed Vitaphone operation, leading to the production of Don Juan and its accompanying shorts over the following months. During the period when Vitaphone had exclusive access to the patents, the fidelity of recordings made for Warners films was markedly superior to those made for the company's sound-on-film competitors. Meanwhile, Bell Labs —the new name for the AT&;T research operation—was working at
17120-446: The renowned Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky placed City Lights as fifth among his top ten and said of Chaplin, "He is the only person to have gone down into cinematic history without any shadow of a doubt. The films he left behind can never grow old." The acclaimed French filmmaker Robert Bresson placed this film as first and second on his top ten films of all time. George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of
17280-493: The rise when Chaplin started developing the script in 1928, he decided to continue working without dialogue only incorporating sound with the use of a synchronized musical score with sound effects. Filming started in December 1928 and ended in September 1930. City Lights marked the first time Chaplin composed the film score to one of his productions and it was written in six weeks with Arthur Johnston . The main theme, used as
17440-411: The role of the millionaire. Although the film was originally set in Paris, the art direction is inspired by a mix of several cities. Robert Sherwood said that "it is a weird city, with confusing resemblances to London, Los Angeles, Naples, Paris, Tangiers and Council Bluffs. It is no city on earth and it is all cities." On August 28, 1928, Chaplin's mother Hannah Chaplin died at the age of 63. Chaplin
17600-431: The running time of 1000 ft of film at 90 ft/min (24 frames/s). Because of the larger diameter the minimum groove velocity of 70 ft/min (14 inches or 356 mm/s) was only slightly less than that of a standard 10-inch 78 rpm commercial disc. In 1925, the company publicly introduced a greatly improved system of electronic audio, including sensitive condenser microphones and rubber-line recorders (named after
17760-421: The scene was so humorous that more people arrived daily to be an extra. In July and August, Chaplin finished up six weeks of smaller scenes, including the two scenes of the Tramp being harassed by newsboys, one of whom was played by a young Robert Parrish . In September 1930, Chaplin finished the shooting of the iconic final scene which took six days. Chaplin said that he was happy with Cherrill's performance in
17920-464: The scene, and that she had eventually understood the role. When talking about his directing style on set, Chaplin stated that "everything I do is a dance. I think in terms of dance. I think more so in City Lights ." From October to December 1930, Chaplin edited the film and created the title cards. When he completed the film, silent films had become generally unpopular. But City Lights was one of
18080-568: The selenium's resistance to electrical currents, which was used to modulate the sound produced in a telephone receiver. He called this invention the photographophone , which he summarized as: "It is truly a wonderful process: sound becomes electricity, becomes light, causes chemical actions, becomes light and electricity again, and finally sound." Ruhmer began a correspondence with the French-born, London-based Eugene Lauste , who had worked at Edison's lab between 1886 and 1892. In 1907, Lauste
18240-549: The set, Chaplin was noted for doing many more " takes " than other directors at the time. Production began with the first scene at the flower stand where the Little Tramp first meets the Blind Flower Girl. The scene took weeks to shoot, and Chaplin first began to have second thoughts about casting Cherrill. Years later, Cherrill said, "I never liked Charlie and he never liked me." In his autobiography, Chaplin took responsibility for his on-set tensions with Cherrill, blaming
18400-404: The shop, where the girl is arranging flowers in the window. He stoops to retrieve a flower discarded in the gutter. After a brief skirmish with his old nemeses, the newsboys, he turns to the shop's window through which he suddenly sees the girl, who has been watching him without (of course) knowing who he is. At the sight of her he is frozen for a few seconds, then breaks into a broad smile. The girl
18560-457: The short term, the introduction of live sound recording caused major difficulties in production. Cameras were noisy, so a soundproofed cabinet was used in many of the earliest talkies to isolate the loud equipment from the actors, at the expense of a drastic reduction in the ability to move the camera. For a time, multiple-camera shooting was used to compensate for the loss of mobility and innovative studio technicians could often find ways to liberate
18720-693: The sound quality was very poor and no other theaters could show the sound version of the film as no one had the Photokinema sound system installed. On Sunday, May 29, Dream Street opened at the Shubert Crescent Theater in Brooklyn with a program of short films made in Phonokinema. However, business was poor, and the program soon closed. In 1925, Sam Warner of Warner Bros. , then a small Hollywood studio with big ambitions, saw
18880-473: The sound-on-disc system were able to draw on expertise that Western Electric already had in electrical disc recording and were thus able to make faster initial progress. The main change required was to increase the playing time of the disc so that it could match that of a standard 1,000 ft (300 m) reel of 35 mm film. The chosen design used a disc nearly 16 inches (about 40 cm) in diameter rotating at 33 1/3 rpm. This could play for 11 minutes,
19040-407: The stress of making the film for the conflict. "I had worked myself into a neurotic state of wanting perfection", he remembered. Filming the scene continued until February 1929 and again for ten days in early April before Chaplin put the scene aside to be filmed later. He then shot the opening scene of the Little Tramp waking up in a newly unveiled public statue. This scene involved up to 380 extras and
19200-467: The studio's recognition of the new medium's power. Interference , Paramount's first all-talker, debuted in November. The process known as "goat glanding" briefly became widespread: soundtracks, sometimes including a smatter of post-dubbed dialogue or song, were added to movies that had been shot, and in some cases released, as silents. A few minutes of singing could qualify such a newly endowed film as
19360-466: The sublicense, both Warners and ERPI received a share of Fox's related revenues. The patents of all three concerns were cross-licensed. Superior recording and amplification technology was now available to two Hollywood studios, pursuing two very different methods of sound reproduction. The new year would finally see the emergence of sound cinema as a significant commercial medium. In 1929 a "new RCA Photophone portable sound and picture reproducing system"
19520-499: The success of The Circus , where a circus clown goes blind and has to conceal his handicap from his young daughter by pretending that his inability to see is an on-going series of pratfalls. This inspired the Blind Girl. The first scenes Chaplin thought up were of the ending, where the newly cured blind girl sees the Little Tramp for the first time. A highly detailed description of the scene was written, as Chaplin considered it to be
19680-483: The talkies' universal appeal—until mid-1930, the majority of Hollywood movies were produced in dual versions, silent as well as talking. Though few in the industry predicted it, silent film as a viable commercial medium in the United States would soon be little more than a memory. Points West , a Hoot Gibson Western released by Universal Pictures in August 1929, was the last purely silent mainstream feature put out by
19840-406: The tank of cold water in the scene, causing Chaplin to storm off the set and fire Clive. He was quickly replaced by Harry Myers , who Chaplin had known while under contract at Keystone Studios . Chaplin finished shooting the sequence on July 29, 1929, with exteriors at Pasadena Bridge. Chaplin then shot a sequence that was eventually cut from the film involving the Little Tramp attempting to retrieve
20000-437: The technology was worth investing in. The development of commercial sound cinema had proceeded in fits and starts before The Jazz Singer , and the film's success did not change things overnight. Influential gossip columnist Louella Parsons ' reaction to The Jazz Singer was badly off the mark: "I have no fear that the screeching sound film will ever disturb our theaters," while MGM head of production Irving Thalberg called
20160-530: The technology, which took place in 1923. Before sound-on-film technology became viable, soundtracks for films were commonly played live with organs or pianos. The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid-to-late 1920s. At first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as " talking pictures ", or " talkies ", were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. The first feature film originally presented as
20320-443: The town. After helping the millionaire home the next morning, he sees the flower girl en route to her street-corner. He gets some money from the millionaire and catches up to the girl; he buys all her flowers and drives her home in the millionaire's car. The millionaire's car is a right-hand drive Rolls-Royce 40/50 hp from 1924. After the Tramp leaves, the flower girl tells her grandmother about her kind and wealthy friend. Meanwhile,
20480-407: The transmitting arc-light as varying shades of light and dark bands onto a continuous roll of photographic film. He then determined that he could reverse the process and reproduce the recorded sound from this photographic strip by shining a bright light through the running filmstrip, with the resulting varying light illuminating a selenium cell. The changes in brightness caused a corresponding change to
20640-567: The triode vacuum tube . Over the next few years they developed it into a predictable and reliable device that made electronic amplification possible for the first time. Western Electric then branched-out into developing uses for the vacuum tube including public address systems and an electrical recording system for the recording industry. Beginning in 1922, the research branch of Western Electric began working intensively on recording technology for both sound-on-disc and sound-on film synchronised sound systems for motion-pictures. The engineers working on
20800-415: The use of a rubber damping band for recording with better frequency response onto a wax master disc ). That May, the company licensed entrepreneur Walter J. Rich to exploit the system for commercial motion pictures; he founded Vitagraph, in which Warner Bros. acquired a half interest, just one month later. In April 1926, Warners signed a contract with AT&T for exclusive use of its film sound technology for
20960-421: The voices and sound effects and providing evocative descriptions of events and images on the screen.... The most popular narrators were stars in their own right, solely responsible for the patronage of a particular theatre." Film historian Mariann Lewinsky argues, The end of silent film in the West and in Japan was imposed by the industry and the market, not by any inner need or natural evolution.... Silent cinema
21120-560: The world's most powerful cultural/commercial centers of influence (see Cinema of the United States ). In Europe (and, to a lesser degree, elsewhere), the new development was treated with suspicion by many filmmakers and critics, who worried that a focus on dialogue would subvert the unique aesthetic virtues of silent cinema. In Japan , where the popular film tradition integrated silent movie and live vocal performance ( benshi ), talking pictures were slow to take root. Conversely, in India, sound
21280-465: The world. The film was voted at No. 21 on the list of "The 100 greatest comedies of all time" by a poll of 253 film critics from 52 countries conducted by the BBC in 2017. In 2021 the film ranked 16th on Time Out magazine's list of The 100 best movies of all time . Sound film A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to
21440-478: The year, AT&T/Western Electric created a licensing division, Electrical Research Products Inc. (ERPI), to handle rights to the company's film-related audio technology. Vitaphone still had legal exclusivity, but having lapsed in its royalty payments, effective control of the rights was in ERPI's hands. On December 31, 1926, Warners granted Fox-Case a sublicense for the use of the Western Electric system; in exchange for
21600-425: Was a highly pleasurable and fully mature form. It didn't lack anything, least in Japan, where there was always the human voice doing the dialogues and the commentary. Sound films were not better, just more economical. As a cinema owner you didn't have to pay the wages of musicians and benshi any more. And a good benshi was a star demanding star payment. By the same token, the viability of the benshi system facilitated
21760-416: Was a variable-area system—a refinement in the way the audio signal was inscribed on film that would ultimately become the standard. (In both sorts of systems, a specially-designed lamp, whose exposure to the film is determined by the audio input, is used to record sound photographically as a series of minuscule lines. In a variable-density process, the lines are of varying darkness; in a variable-area process,
21920-459: Was achieved in recording, it could be absolutely counted on in playback. Over the next four years, he improved his system with the help of equipment and patents licensed from another American inventor in the field, Theodore Case . At the University of Illinois , Polish-born research engineer Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner was working independently on a similar process. On June 9, 1922, he gave
22080-502: Was also shot in English as Atlantic . The entirely German Aafa-Film production It's You I Have Loved ( Dich hab ich geliebt ) opened three and a half weeks later. It was not "Germany's First Talking Film", as the marketing had it, but it was the first to be released in the United States. In 1930, the first Polish talkies premiered, using sound-on-disc systems: Moralność pani Dulskiej ( The Morality of Mrs. Dulska ) in March and
22240-400: Was awarded the first patent for sound-on-film technology, involving the transformation of sound into light waves that are photographically recorded direct onto celluloid . As described by historian Scott Eyman, It was a double system, that is, the sound was on a different piece of film from the picture.... In essence, the sound was captured by a microphone and translated into light waves via
22400-449: Was created in still a different sort of twist on multinational moviemaking: The Crimson Circle was a coproduction between director Friedrich Zelnik 's Efzet-Film company and British Sound Film Productions (BSFP). In 1928, the film had been released as the silent Der Rote Kreis in Germany, where it was shot; English dialogue was apparently dubbed in much later using the De Forest Phonofilm process controlled by BSFP's corporate parent. It
22560-820: Was described in the industry journal Projection Engineering. In Australia, Hoyts and Gilby Talkies Pty., Ltd were touring talking pictures to country towns. The same year the White Star Line installed talking picture equipment on the s.s. Majestic. The features shown on the first voyage were Show Boat and Broadway . In February 1927, an agreement was signed by five leading Hollywood movie companies: Famous Players–Lasky (soon to be part of Paramount ), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , Universal , First National , and Cecil B. DeMille 's small but prestigious Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC). The five studios agreed to collectively select just one provider for sound conversion, and then waited to see what sort of results
22720-623: Was developed by Clément-Maurice Gratioulet and Henri Lioret of France, allowing short films of theater, opera, and ballet excerpts to be presented at the Paris Exposition in 1900. These appear to be the first publicly exhibited films with projection of both image and recorded sound. Phonorama and yet another sound-film system—Théâtroscope—were also presented at the Exposition. Three major problems persisted, leading to motion pictures and sound recording largely taking separate paths for
22880-411: Was distraught for several weeks and pre-production did not resume until mid fall of 1928. Psychologist Stephen Weissman has hypothesized that City Lights is highly autobiographical, with the blind girl representing Chaplin's mother, while the drunken millionaire represents Chaplin's father. Weissman also compared many of the film's sets with locations from Chaplin's real childhood, such as the statue in
23040-522: Was especially stressful for Chaplin to shoot. During this part of shooting, construction was being done at Chaplin Studios because the city of Los Angeles had decided to widen La Brea Avenue and Chaplin was forced to move several buildings away from the road. Chaplin then shot the sequence where the Little Tramp first meets the millionaire and prevents him from committing suicide. During filming, Henry Clive suddenly decided that he did not want to jump into
23200-525: Was first contacted by inventor Eugene Augustin Lauste in 1918 about making a sound film, but he never ended up meeting with Lauste. Chaplin was dismissive about "talkies" and told a reporter that he would "give the talkies three years, that's all." He was also concerned about how to adjust the Little Tramp to sound films. In early 1928, Chaplin began writing the script with Harry Carr . The plot gradually grew from an initial concept Chaplin had considered after
23360-520: Was given a British trade screening in March 1929, as was a part-talking film made entirely in the UK: The Clue of the New Pin , a British Lion production using the sound-on-disc British Photophone system. In May, Black Waters , which British and Dominions Film Corporation promoted as the first UK all-talker, received its initial trade screening; it had been shot completely in Hollywood with
23520-427: Was his last film before the motion picture industry embraced sound recording and brought the silent movie era to a close. As his own producer and distributor (part owner of United Artists ), Chaplin could still conceive City Lights as a silent film. Technically the film was a crossover, as its soundtrack had synchronized music and sound effects but no spoken dialogue. The dialogue was presented on intertitles . Chaplin
23680-455: Was illustrated by Canadian cartoonist Seth . In 1952, Sight and Sound magazine revealed the results of its first poll for "The Best Films of All Time"; City Lights was voted #2, after Vittorio DeSica 's Bicycle Thieves . In 2002, City Lights ranked 45th on the critics' list. That same year, directors were polled separately and ranked the film as 19th overall. In 1991, the Library of Congress selected City Lights for preservation in
23840-399: Was nervous about the film's reception because silent films were becoming obsolete by then, and the preview had undermined his confidence. Nevertheless, City Lights became one of Chaplin's most financially successful and critically acclaimed works. Following the good reception by American audiences, with estimated theatrical rentals of $ 2 million, a quarter of which came from its 12-week run at
24000-484: Was number 38 on AFI's list of the 50 Best Heroes , and the film ranked at 38th among the funniest films , 10th among the greatest love stories , and 33rd on the most inspiring films . The film's original 1931 poster, illustrated by Hap Hadley , was ranked 52nd on the AFI's list "Top 100 American Movie Poster Classics" in 2003. The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: The Village Voice ranked
24160-469: Was recorded on RCA Photophone, General Electric having bought a share of AEG so they could access the Tobis-Klangfilm markets. Blackmail was a substantial hit; critical response was also positive—notorious curmudgeon Hugh Castle, for example, called it "perhaps the most intelligent mixture of sound and silence we have yet seen." On August 23, the modest-sized Austrian film industry came out with
24320-422: Was recorded, as was a sequence of live vocal effects. Apparently, dialogue scenes were also recorded, but the results were unsatisfactory and the film was never publicly screened incorporating them. On May 1, 1921, Dream Street was re-released, with love song added, at New York City's Town Hall theater, qualifying it—however haphazardly—as the first feature-length film with a live-recorded vocal sequence. However,
24480-481: Was screened around the United States: eight hours worth of projected visuals involving both slides and live action, synchronized with separately recorded lectures and musical performances played back on phonograph. Meanwhile, innovations continued on another significant front. In 1900, as part of the research he was conducting on the photophone , the German physicist Ernst Ruhmer recorded the fluctuations of
24640-507: Was shown. These were the two most acclaimed sound motion pictures to date. In May, as well, Fox had released the first Hollywood fiction film with synchronized dialogue: the short They're Coming to Get Me , starring comedian Chic Sale . After rereleasing a few silent feature hits, such as Seventh Heaven , with recorded music, Fox came out with its first original Movietone feature on September 23: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans , by acclaimed German director F. W. Murnau . As with Don Juan ,
24800-554: Was talked out of this idea by his collaborators. Chaplin finally re-hired Cherrill to finish City Lights . She demanded and got a raise to $ 75 per week. Approximately seven minutes of test footage of Hale survives and is included on the DVD release; excerpts were first seen in the documentary Unknown Chaplin along with an unused opening sequence. Chaplin then cast Florence Lee as the Blind Girl's grandmother and shot scenes with Cherrill and Lee for five weeks. In late 1929, Chaplin re-shot
24960-420: Was the challenge of recording fidelity. The primitive systems of the era produced sound of very low quality unless the performers were stationed directly in front of the cumbersome recording devices (acoustical horns, for the most part), imposing severe limits on the sort of films that could be created with live-recorded sound. Cinematic innovators attempted to cope with the fundamental synchronization problem in
25120-673: Was the primary competitor to the Gaumont system (sources differ on whether the Cameraphone was disc- or cylinder-based); it ultimately failed for many of the same reasons that held back the Chronophone. In 1913, Edison introduced a new cylinder-based synch-sound apparatus known, just like his 1895 system, as the Kinetophone. Instead of films being shown to individual viewers in the Kinetoscope cabinet, they were now projected onto
25280-452: Was the transformative element that led to the rapid expansion of the nation's film industry . The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the concept of cinema itself. On February 27, 1888, a couple of days after photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge gave a lecture not far from the laboratory of Thomas Edison , the two inventors met privately. Muybridge later claimed that on this occasion, six years before
25440-429: Was uncharacteristic for the time and was a sign of the long production process. Chaplin shot 314,256 feet of film, and the completed film ran 8,093 feet. This made a shooting ratio of approximately 38.8 feet of film for each foot of film that made it in the final version. City Lights marked the first time Chaplin composed the film score to one of his productions. While Chaplin preferred his films to have live sound, by
25600-465: Was underwhelming. Sweden's first talkie, Konstgjorda Svensson ( Artificial Svensson ), premiered on October 14. Eight days later, Aubert Franco-Film came out with Le Collier de la reine ( The Queen's Necklace ), shot at the Épinay studio near Paris. Conceived as a silent film, it was given a Tobis-recorded score and a single talking sequence—the first dialogue scene in a French feature. On October 31, Les Trois masques ( The Three Masks ) debuted;
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