Roundtable: Film Connoisseurs of Central Ohio

"The SOB is a ballet dancer. He’s the best ballet dancer that ever lived, and if I get a good chance I’ll kill him with my bare hands." - W.C. Fields

In City Lights, Chaplin's Little Tramp meets a blind girl selling flowers who mistakes him for a wealthy man. When he learns that an operation may restore her sight, he sets off to earn the money she needs to have the surgery. He also befriends an alcoholic millionaire who only recognizes him when he is drunk. When the blind girl and her grandmother fall behind in the rent and face eviction, he tries working and even enters a boxing competition to raise the money they need.

Regarded as Chaplin's masterpiece, City Lights has been ranked on more than seventeen "100 greatest movies of all time" lists. Orson Welles cited it as his favorite picture.

City Lights is available for streaming on Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBOMax, Tubi and PlutoTV. The Columbus Library lists three copies on blu-ray and eight copies on DVD. Watch the movie on your own, then join us upstairs at East Market to discuss the film.

If you want more, Unknown Chaplin is a three-episode lost-footage documentary available on Youtube. It covers his time on City Lights beginning at the twenty-six minute mark of episode two: https://youtu.be/f8960Uc15hI?t=1558

By popular demand, the group wanted to read and discuss the semi-autobiographical novel by Henri-Pierre Roche, that inspired the Truffaut movie we watched last year.

The book is available through the Columbus Library's interlibrary loan system. They reported there are twenty-eight copies available in the state of Ohio. If you have a library card, you can file an interlibrary loan request here: https://www.columbuslibrary.org/library-services/ . There are also used copies available on Amazon and eBay for under twenty dollars.

You may want to rewatch the movie after reading the book, so we can compare and contrast in our discussion. The Columbus Library has four copies on DVD, and it's streaming on HBOMax.