This is Chaplin's most acclaimed film and although I didn't praise it as much as the critics, it's a great film to own. It's the charming story of a tramp who tries to get a blind girl's sight back. Since I leave the actual review of the film in my film page and I don't consider picture and sound when I buy a DVD, I will go straight to the special features, like I always do.
All the special features appear on Disc 2 of the DVD.
We start off with David Robinson's usual introduction which is always a great way to start looking at the special features. He explains Chaplin's orginal story idea, the hatred towards his female co-star, and how he coped with the newly added popularity of sound pictures. Very interesting are the Chaplin quotes which he reads.
We continue onto the "Chaplin Today" documentary for City Lights which is the best one I've seen so far. Explained are already what was explained by the introduction and more. Since I am a fan of Wallace and Gromit and the many other Aardman shorts, I really enjoyed the interview with Peter Lord. He gives many great reasons for how Chaplin contributed so much to his animation style and it's great especially for someone like me, who enjoys clamation very much.
We then move to an deleted scene which features the Tramp attempting to get a piece of wood out of a gutter. It's a enjoyable piece of comedy which although very funny, I'm happy it was deleted from the final product, because it doesn't contribute anything to the film.
We move to the "Documents" domain of the disc which starts off with a very interesting snippet called "Shooting." It shows Chaplin and Virginia Cherrill shooting the scene the Tramp and the flower girl first meet. It's a brilliant piece of history, and don't let the absence of sound stop you from enjoying it. The Georgia Hale screentest isn't as interesting. Chaplin wanted to replace Cherrill with his co-star from The Gold Rush, but her screen test is awfully boring. We just get her smiling and holding a flower for six and a half minutes. You wonder that maybe this was why Chaplin didn't hire her. We then get two very interesting pieces which show the flower girl's imagining of her "millionaire" friend, and Chaplin practicing the elevator sequence from the film. We then two clips showing Chaplin having a pretend boxing fight. The first clip isn't that interesting, but the second one is really entertaining. Winston Churchill visits the set in the next clip which is nice just to see the great leader with the great movie star. The next segment is a rip-off though, called "Chaplin Speaks!", Chaplin says one word in the whole three and a half minute newsreel. "Trip to Bali" is also nothing worthy as Chaplin also appeards for a few seconds.
We then get an entertaining clip from Chaplin's 1915 short, The Champion which is another film featuring a funny Chaplin boxing match. It's great, but we should have gotten the whole thing.
We then get some amazing trailers, but also the weakest of the photos and posters in the Chaplin Collection. Finally the disc caps off with short clips from the other films in the Chaplin Collection. I consider this feature rather useless since we can watch the entire picture on the other DVDs (This part doesn't affect the final percentage).
Although not one of my favourite films, City Lights is still a must own. The final percentage for City Lights: The Chaplin Collection is 72%.