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| Final scene from City Lights |
Launching along side Edgewood University, the program of special interest courses that runs every Friday for six weeks (Jan 6 - Feb 10), is the Edgewood Film Festival. The Festival features conversations and clips from about a dozen Depression era movies. The purpose of these discussions is for students to understand how children coped with poverty during the Depression.
One of the films featured in the Festival is Charlie Chaplin's
City Lights (1931). It's a funny and touching love story in which the little guy and the little girl, despite the misfortunes slung at them, nurture hope long enough to find that one thing in life for which they most yearn.
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Charlie Chaplin still makes
children laugh |
I was pleasantly surprised to see how well Chaplin's visual humor played to an audience of 7 year olds, more than 80 years after its first run. Here's a sample of what made them laugh. Watch this scene from
City Lights in which Charlie Chaplin's Tramp character provides a visual commentary on
a society of haves and have nots.
- Paul Tomizawa
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