Chaplin and Garbo

Anne has just brought inside a bunch of sweet-smelling daphne, a harbinger of spring.

There were two disks in the Chaplin City Lights DVD. Last evening I put the second one on, footage of the actual filming, discussions about the film and other Chaplin movies, casting problems, a visit by Winston Churchill to the set, clips from other movies and a bonus – an early Chaplin movie The Champion in which Chaplin won the boxing match.

Chaplin himself said the ending of City Lights was his finest bit of cinema. Other critics agree. The realisation of the girl, her sight restored, that the down-at-heel tramp was her benefactor is a real tear-jerker. As I discovered the previous night.

It was fascinating to see rehearsals. Chaplin was a perfectionist. I had not realised that he wrote the music for the film himself. He decided not to have voices - he saw the tramp as universal and for the character to have a voice and in one particular language would diminish the image.

Earlier in the day I’d been surfing the net. I got into a Mata Hari site. There was a short video clip of Greta Garbo and Ramon Novarro in the 1931 movie about the dancer executed on the suspicion of being a German spy.

Garbo asks Novarro why he has a candle burning before the Madonna. He explains his mother asked him to light it and he has never let it go out. She flirts with him. He tells her he loves her. She asks how much. More than God or country. He claims to. She then says its too light. He puts out the lamps. She says it’ still too light, would he put out the candle He refuses. She pouts and says he doesn’t love her. Reluctantly and asking forgiveness for his action he blows out the light. It was powerful theatre, the femme fatale brilliantly acted.