While taking a tour of Universal Studios in California, Albert Einstein mentioned that he always wanted to meet Charlie Chaplin. So a studio head contacted the famous comic, and soon two of the most famous men of the 20th century were having lunch together. A few days later, Einstein – dressed, uncharacteristically, in black tie – accompanied Chaplin to the Los Angeles premiere of the comedian’s new movie.
In his biography of Einstein, Walter Isaacson notes that as the two men received enthusiastic applause, Chaplin said to the scientist, “They cheer me because they all understand me, and they cheer you because no one understands you.”
The movie was “City Lights” – an understandable story. Billed as “a comedy romance in pantomime,” the 1931 film is, like all Chaplin’s best work, both very funny and very sentimental. It has no obvious connection with Christmas, either in a religious or secular sense, but it is my unconventional recommendation for Christmas viewing.
The film concerns Chaplin’s classic Tramp character, with his bowler hat and cane, and his relationship with the Flower Girl, a blind young woman who lives with her grandmother and sells flowers on the street.
The Tramp is attracted to the Flower Girl as soon as he sees her. But through some Chaplinesque antics and coincidences, she believes him to be a wealthy man. When the Tramp learns that the Flower Girl and her grandmother are so behind on their rent that they are about to be evicted – and also that a new surgery could possibly cure the woman’s blindness – he is determined to get her the money she needs. Slapstick and silliness follow, but the Tramp is ultimately successful.
After placing a substantial stack of money in the blind woman’s hand, the Tramp says he has to go away for a while, without explaining what the audience understands: He’s about to be arrested because of a misunderstanding about how he got the money.
The film swiftly jumps ahead nearly a year to its conclusion.
The Flower Girl has had the surgery to restore her sight. She is no longer selling flowers on the street but working in an upscale florist shop and dreamily imagining that someday, her benefactor – a wealthy and no doubt handsome gentleman – will come back to her.
Looking out the shop window, she’s amused to see a small, ragged man being taunted by a couple of local boys. It’s the Tramp, just released from prison.
When the Tramp chances to glance in her direction and sees the formerly impoverished young woman, now healthy and well-dressed, his joy is evident. She laughs at his attention, but in an act of charity, she comes out of the store to give him a rose and a coin. The Tramp accepts the rose, and the Flower Girl manages to press the coin into the palm of his other hand.
At that point, suddenly, she seems to recognize the feel of the poor man’s hand. Her face conveys her confusion as she wonders if it could possibly be the same hand that held her own when she was at her lowest point. She rubs the palm of her own hand on the lapel of his jacket and recognizes the feel of the fabric that she affixed a flower to when she was blind.
So, could this insignificant-seeming man – who only moments ago she saw as a figure of pity and ridicule – really be the one who gave her a new life?
If so, could she even comprehend the sacrifice he must have made for her?
Astonished, she asks, “You?”
It is the same one-word question that those awaiting a powerful, conquering Messiah might have asked upon seeing a helpless infant born in a stable. It is the same simple question Jesus’ earliest followers had to ask when he was suffering a painful and shameful death.
“City Lights” ends with two short lines of dialogue.
“You can see now?” the Tramp asks. He points to his eye as he speaks – but “seeing” can mean more than eyesight. “To see” can mean “to understand.”
The Flower Girl responds, “Yes, I can see now.”
Do we see?
The Incarnation upends our assumptions and expectations, and should challenge us every bit as much as it did the earliest Christians.
Even at Christmas, more than 2,000 years after Christ’s Birth, we can take for granted a mystery that is not at all easy to understand.
(For those reluctant to watch a silent, black and white film, the “City Lights” ending is available on YouTube.)
Carl Peters is former managing editor of the Catholic Star Herald.
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