Digital Valentine's Day Favorites, Part 1: Charlie Chaplin's City Lights

"Am I a romantic? I've seen Wuthering Heights ten times. I'm a romantic." -- Johnny Depp

This week, Film.com is featuring four DVDs recommended for Valentine's Day. Each day through Thursday the 14th, we'll select a film that captures the spirit of romance. Of course, with nearly 100 years of movies to choose from -- a high percentage of them "romantic," from the heart-warming to the stomach turning -- narrowing down the selections to only four titles was difficult.

So although Casablanca, Sleepless in Seattle, Notting Hill or Shakespeare in Love are all fine and worthy films, we're tossing out the obvious choices, cookie-cutter rom-coms, and anything starring Hugh Grant. Thinking outside the heart-shaped chocolate box, we chose three great vintage Hollywood classics and a modern indie (one that reminds us how love comes in boxes of all shapes), and placed them in the player for this year's Digital Valentine's Day film fest.

Digital Valentine's Day No. 1: Charlie Chaplin's City Lights

As the old song goes, love is a many-splendored thing. It's also a very funny thing. It's just a coincidence -- but a telling one -- that every film we chose for this year's Digital Valentine's Day fest is a comedy to one degree or another. The movies have blended love and laughter since the days of the so-called silent screen, when nobody aimed for matters of the heart and funnybone more often or more successfully than Charlie Chaplin. His blend of heart-tugging emotion and masterful comedy helped the movies grow up from slapstick and pie fights. Any one of dozens of Chaplin's films, from his early shorts to his later features, could have fit today's slot.

But we had to pick one, and right off the bat we can count four reasons why Chaplin's City Lights ranks high among the greatest romantic movies ever made:

1.) In this funny, humane love story of the gentleman Tramp giving his all for the sake of a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill, one of the future Mrs. Cary Grants), Chaplin achieved a pitch-perfect balance of comedy and warm-heartedness. Its pathos isn't as thick as a bucket of warm caramel, and its comedy -- from broad slapstick to the most delicate bodily motions -- exhibits a range that shows us why Chaplin remains unequaled. In 2007 the American Film Institute's tenth anniversary edition of "100 Years...100 Movies" named City Lights the eleventh greatest American film of all time, the list's highest ranking silent film and comedy. At Rotten Tomatoes its "Freshness" rating is 100%.

2.) You've heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, right? City Lights is what they're talking about. Although released in 1931, four years after The Jazz Singer kicked down the door for sound films, City Lights is still considered the last great film of the silent era. Chaplin wisely chose to not let the audience hear the Tramp speak, which would have destroyed the character's delicate universality and Everyman quality. But he didn't avoid sound altogether. Instead, he insisted that the film would contain no spoken dialogue yet possess its own synchronized soundtrack built from a musical score (his first) and strategically deployed sound effects. The result is an ingenious blend of expressionistic sounds used for satiric and farcical effect.

3.) With its tightly packaged displays of Chaplin's physical athleticism and grace, expressive performance, honestly achieved sentiment, humorous ribbing at social elites, and sheer compassionate humanity, City Lights by itself could stand as a full Chaplin sampler. And if we ever shoot a time capsule into space to represent who we as a civilization were in the 20th century, you can make a good case for including City Lights as an example of our better side.

4.) That final scene. Last week, CNN asked -- in "The Screening Room's Top 10 Romantic Moments" -- whether this was the most touching film moment of all time. Could be. Either way, if it doesn't move you, you're beyond human reach.

Which DVD edition?

It's easy to find DVD editions of City Lights. However, be sure to find a good one. The DVD shelves are crowded with vintage classics issued in crappy editions with public-domain prints that look like they were scraped over a cheese grater, made worse with tinny audio and often with entire scenes scissored out with all the care of a bris performed with a cigar cutter.

So I recommend the MK2/Warner Home Video "The Chaplin Collection" edition issued in 2003. It comes from a series of boxed sets that give us definitive editions of Chaplin's feature-length films in exhaustive, features-rich DVD presentations. Under the authority of the Chaplin estate, the films have been digitally restored and remastered from vault elements to deliver them in their final state, "as Chaplin intended."

The series' City Lights disc offers a restored black-and-white image that's smooth, well defined and displays nicely balanced grayscale. Chaplin's soundtrack, cleaned and fresh like new, comes in two Dolby Digital remastered options -- the original monaural (Dolby Digital 2.0) and a new DD 5.1 remix. Each option offers a track that's full-bodied, clear and free of hiss or wear.

Special features include biographer David Robinson's fine bird's-eye overview of City Lights' lengthy production history (two years, eight months), of Chaplin's decision to keep the Tramp silent while the rest of Hollywood was leaping into the sound revolution, and the film's triumphant critical acclaim. Chaplin loved to be associated with the world-class smart set, so there he is at the L.A. premiere with Albert Einstein and the London opening with George Bernard Shaw.

Also here are outtakes, behind-the-scenes footage, and Chaplin Today - City Lights (26 minutes). This lively documentary by Serge Bromberg, covering Chaplin's "story of love and hope between two lost souls," features animator Peter Lord, who with Nick Park gave us Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run. During his enthusiastic breakdown of City Lights' "one gem after another," Lord points to Chaplin as both an ideal animated figure and a master animator in full control of his art.

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