The lovable Tramp has started the day off as the main attraction at an unveiling of a new statue. He couldn’t find anywhere comfortable to sleep and had to rest up on a stone man. Now they have taken off the sheet, he is awoken and turfed out on to the streets. He is on the town and finding a wide manner of faces to call pals. A beautiful blind girl who sells flowers and her heart. Then there is a hot and cold foolish rich man. Who befriends the Tramp but only when he is drunk. A street cleaner leader that gives him a job as a manure picker upper. He gets in on a boxing match and also criminals that want to rob his rich friend.

Chaplin was entering the sound era when he came to direct, write and star in this sentimental comedy. A massive hit in its day, it was to be his most straight forward and touching of films. Unlike his previous films (all released by Curzon) The Gold Rush and The Kid, this film was based in the present and in a world the audiences would have found some what familiar. The settings for this film are very important and also very telling of what the main ambition of the film was to be. Chaplin was starting a conversation about the world but unlike many of his other films, this was designed to be his first social political piece.

It is interesting to note that Chaplin was making a film that was focused on the richness of people who were hot and cold about poverty.  This film actually could be said to focus on the idea of Chaplin and his very human fears. The fear to be poor or the fear to be ignored but in my opinion it is also a film about the lack of consideration. The rich it seems care about the poor when they are of entertainment value. When they joke, punch or are drinking with them. Outside of this, the rich find the poor as a burden and as a repellent. They blame them for being work shy or lazy and not ‘fun enough’. This is very telling in the set piece scenes where The Tramp becomes centre stage to a marble statue. He is looked at by the intellectuals as a burden. Then the drunk rich friend who cares only about him when he makes him laugh. This is in total opposite to the relationship he has with the blind girl. Balanced with tenderness and the richness of love. They are but two hearts wanting to connect over the steep void of life. This is shown in tender floral scenes that are at once wonderful in subtle tone and clever in wit and pathos. He also sets about finding money for her eye operation that seems very far fetched but is a nod to the alturism of those with nothing. Giving everything to another for the simple joy of happiness.

This film does however expose a problem with Chaplin and his early political films. This film has great set ups and pay off but delivers thems with a bloated concept. I love Chaplin and I know this is an audience favourite but for me it is just a little to heavy. That takes away nothing from the beauty of the love story, its composition and its clever critique of life. It has a very soft but deeply felt idea of the fragile state of people. Now the film looks very good for its age and Curzon are to thank for that. Chaplin had an eye for the slight and real. This meant his shot construction was on the space and not on the content. The sound is also re conditioned but in my opinion is a little flat. The fact it is written by Chaplin shows his own hubris. Albeit a nicer kind of the type as he loved to be the master of all things.