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See No Evil, Speak No Evil The 1931 film City Lights delineates the Little Tramp's incompatability with the world. The setting is a city: "no city on earth and also all cities" (Sherwood qtd Robinson 395). The Little Tramp first appears at the dedication of a statue representing "Peace and Prosperity;" he is asleep in the lap of the central figure. The city bigwigs are not pleased to see him. A chase ensues, and Charlie gets away. He crosses a street through the backseats of cars that are either parked or stopped in traffic; getting out on the other side he slams the door, which catches the attention of a blind girl selling flowers on the sidewalk; she calls out to him. Charlie does not realize that she cannot see him and believes that because he got out of a car she thinks him wealthy. He buys a flower. She tries to give him the wrong one, and it falls to the sidewalk. When Charlie has picked up the flower and the girl is feeling for it on the ground he sees that she is blind and is entranced. The real owner of the car returns, gets in, slams the door once again, and the girl believes Charlie has gone. He creeps away, then returns to be near her again. In the course of the film, Charlie befriends a millionaire, who unfortunately recognizes the Little Tramp only when inebriated, courts the flower girl in the guise of a wealthy man and, wishing to finance an operation which will restore her sight, steals the money the millionaire promised him while drunk and then denies when sober. Charlie goes to jail for the theft, but not before giving the money to the girl. In his relationship with both the millionaire and the flower girl, the Little Tramp experiments with social mobility. He attends a nightclub with the millionaire, drives his car, and buys all the flower girl's flowers with his money. But his persona is enabled by the millionaire's alcoholism and the flower girl's blindness. When the millionaire is sober, the Tramp is not allowed in his house; in order to keep up his guise while courting the flower girl he must get a job as a street sweep and visit her on his lunch break--a practice that gets him fired. When the Tramp-as-Rich Man tells the flower girl about the operation and she replies, "Then I'll be able to see you!" this is for him a moment of sadness; he cannot share in the joy his "position" should be bringing about because he knows that when she does see him she will see that he is not what she sees in her mind, and their relationship will end. The Little Tramp goes to great lengths to acquire the freedom that should come with money. In previous films, his freedom was effortless, and in City Lights the very extent of the effort enacts its failure: if he had not tried so hard to get the money, perhaps the girl would have remained blind and they could have lived together, although in blindness and deceit. In the end, the fantasy of mobility is over. The Little Tramp gets out of jail, his clothes more ragged than they have ever been. His movement is slow. Walking to where the flower girl used to sit he finds the spot empty. Then he sees her, in her own shop and apparently doing quite well. He stands outside the glass. She sees him and turns laughing to the shop girls: "I've made a conquest!" she says. She holds a flower to him, gesturing for him to come inside for it. Charlie cannot move. The flower girl goes out, and chases him when he tries to hurry away. She is able to catch him. When she pins the flower to the Tramp's lapel, she knows who he is. She feels his hand: "You?" Charlie nods and says, "You can see now?" to which she replies, "Yes, I can see now." The last shot is of Charlie's smiling face, frozen into an expression that is distinctly odd. The Little Tramp does not often smile; when he does it is usually for insidious purposes. This smile does not seem one of hope or joy or even of fond remembrance of the times spent with the flower girl when she thought he was a millionaire. "The ending of City Lights is a sublime expression of tension, neither in comedy or tragedy but suspended in between" (Kuriyama 38). We are back to the suspensive state in which The Kid leaves us; here, however, is the essential difference of the Little Tramp's knowledge of being in that state. Charlie's expression at the end of this film springs from his revelation of social mobility as an empty dream. Charlie usually went about his business with a kind of optimism of displacement: nothing he did could really be right, so nothing could be wrong. But Charlie's masquerading as what he is not is a violation of his authenticity. His pretense has the guise of authenticity but is dependent on another's blindness. That said, there is a sadness at the end of the film. In The Idle Class, Charlie's dual role performance leads the audience to feel that what distinguishes the Tramp from the wealthy man is authenticity of action. But in City Lights, it is not what they do, but how they look. There is no freedom for the Little Tramp in a system governed by appearances. The flower girl is equally trapped. Her dream of marrying a millionaire will never be fulfilled
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