I was thinking today the most emotional moment I’ve witnessed in film is the ending of City Lights. The Tramp stands, looks at the once blind girl in her florist shop, and his face is like a river filled with a mix of emotions only Chaplin could convey silently. But that is not the moment.
The once blind girl sees the Tramp, doesn’t know who he is, and says (according to the intercut card) to her assistants, “I’ve made a conquest”. She offers him a flower and a coin. He can’t take his eyes off her.
She takes it out to him. He turns, humiliated, tries to get away, but she insists he take it. She gives him the flower, he takes it as if is the most precious gift on earth, he stares at her as if mesmerized. She hands him the coin, and it is when she touches his hand that she realizes. She strokes the hand, unbelieving, awareness flooding every fibre of her — this is her champion, the one who took care of her, restored her eyesight. This pitiful homeless penniless man whom she always imagined to be a grand wealthy benefactor.
I am still moved to tears as I write this.
For me, the emotional perfection of the scene, the imagining of it — we centre on the touch. We feel it as she touches him. It is an electric moment that I cannot imagine being duplicated or bettered.
In part, it’s because it is a silent film. There is no conversation to distract us. Everything is said through gesture, glance, and then … the image of the touch, the touch that brings back memories, floods her with emotion, that resonates within him — who can watch this moment without feeling?
I say with true belief (and absolutely no evidence to base it upon) that the entire film is created toward this climax, this one moment. But I believe it with my heart, because Chaplin speaks so directly we cannot experience it but as if it’s happening this moment. This climactic moment, he doesn’t create the delight we experience to watch his acrobatics/ comic slapstick, nor the continuous comedy that inspires our pure unalloyed laughter, instead he speaks to our hearts, our yearning to be loved (a subject Chaplin knew much about), and the joy we collectively experience to witness a moment of the realization of love — the fictional kind — and none the less cherished and valued that it is but a dream.
Wisely, the film ends with the scene, as what could possibly follow that would not disappoint?