Reviewing City Lights Essay

"there is no American director, faced with the hypothetical problem of showing a railroad crossing in Spain or an open field in Austro-Hungary, who does not solve the problem by representing the site with a set, built especially for the occasion, whose only merit must be its ostentatious cost." (1999: 146)
Another director and actor to whom Borges dedicates his film reviews is Charlie Chaplin, one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood. Reviewing City Lights, a silent romantic comedy film of 1931 that was listed among the 100 Greatest American Movies by American Film Institute in 1998, Borges calls Chaplin as “one of the established gods in the mythology of our time” (1999:144). Referring to the mentioned movie, Borges considers

The film is considered as one of the masterpieces of the history of cinema and it is ranked among one hundred movies of all time by the American Film Institute. It is praised for its innovation in cinematography, editing, narrative structure, and music. As says in the interview, Borges didn't like the film when he saw it for the first time (while, later, he changed his idea) since, in his opinion, it seemed just an imitation of Josef Von Sternberg and, at the same time, the idea of the movie was taken from another film titled The Power and the Glory directed by William K. Howard in 1933. The title that Borges has selected for the review of this film, that is, An overwhelming Film, shows the effect that the film had on him. He talks about two plots of this film, that are, a millionaire who is collecting things which, finally, discovers that all is vanity and a nihilist called Koheleth and its links with Franz Kafka. Borges admires the work of Orson Welles which invites the spectator to combine the fragments of the life of the film protagonist, Charles Foster Kane, in order to reconstruct him. He also praises the deep cinematography, the detailed shots and the close-ups of the film. And, in his opinion, this overwhelming film will endure in the history of