When I watched the Chaplin series intermittently on CCTV as a child, I couldn't help but laugh, and Chaplin became the unsurpassable king of comedy in my mind. But when I come back today, I can't laugh anymore, only a wry smile, a silent laugh, just like the film itself.
When we discuss a comedy now, we often discuss the lines first and then the performance. For example, the domestic classic melodrama "Wulin Gaiden", the witty script of Ning Caishen and Shang Jing coupled with meticulous performances by Yan Nisha Yi and others, has achieved a peak of domestic melodrama.
However, when we look at comedy in such a way of thinking, it is inevitable that comedy is confined to the "humorous and humorous pastime culture", making comedy a utopia for people to escape from reality, rather than a knife to criticize reality. Comedy can be heavy, comedy can be serious, comedy can be full of shock. When Chaplin was under pressure from the U.S. government and risked being assassinated by the German Nazis and insisted on finishing filming "The Great Dictator" and releasing it worldwide, comedy was no longer a recreational thing, but became the consciousness of the people during the war. arms.
Another example is "Modern Times", a complaint that mourns the persecution of the people by the Industrial Revolution and targets the bourgeoisie. It melts into every nerve twitch, every unemployment and employment, every time the worker played by Chaplin Once in prison and in prison, comedy is just a wonderful opportunity to exaggerate reality.
The profound connotation and immense expressive power of comedy have long been excavated by the film master of the beginning of the century and demonstrated vividly, but later generations just kept trying to emulate it.
The reason why "City Lights" has become a comedy may still be because the classic tramp portrayed by Chaplin has become a portrait of American comedy culture, and the comedy plot full of exaggerations and coincidences interspersed in it will also make people laugh. , But I think this is more like a sad feature film, a documentary that reveals the living conditions of people in real society, and an inspirational film that exposes people's pain and also gives people hope.
It is hard to imagine how a homeless man who has a difficult life can win the light of a blind girl with his perseverance and dignity. Before that, the flower-blind girl was like a tramp, struggling in the humble corners of the city. What Chaplin is trying to reveal is this social reality: the class division is so severe that the upper-class people have been able to completely ignore the existence of the lower-class people and live in deaf ears every night.
If the reproduction of reality belongs to the critical level, then the expression of love should belong to the praise level. But this praise is sad. The homeless man pretends to be a rich gentleman, working hard to help the blind girl, but he enjoys it himself. From the perspective of bystanders, this "happiness" has deepened its tragic connotation. At the same time, he was played between drunkenness and sobriety by the rich, without any complaints or anger. He was arrested and imprisoned in order to bring the money to the blind girl, and when he was in prison, he just flicked away his cigarette butts pretending to be indifferent. When he finally saw the recovered blind woman running his own flower shop, he just smirked in a daze, and finally walked away silently.
He clearly knows what kind of society he is in, and he also knows exactly what position he is in this society. He is like a poor but romantic poet, using crutches and duck-billed shoes to write optimistic verses belonging to the people at the bottom of a city, illuminating the world of another person.
If in the end the tramp just walked away silently, and the flower girl still waited ignorantly for the Prince Charming in her heart, this ending might be closer to reality. But Chaplin obviously does not want to simply reproduce the powerlessness and paleness of reality. He hopes that his comedy can give the audience more hope for the future. The flower girl learned that the filthy beggar in front of her was the one who helped her. She did not hesitate or abdicate, but smiled sincerely and held the tramp's hand tightly to her chest.
The sculpture of a city cannot sustain the dignity of the city, but the light of a city is lit by a city tramp.
This is a helpless reality, but also a faint hope.
In front of this, none of us can laugh.
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