Interestingly, in my country there is a Chaplin weekly marathon these last weeks (one film every Sunday for a few weeks now). And this week they are airing City Lights. It’s indeed the best film of 1931 - incredibly funny and endearing, great acting, amazing scenes, an absolute masterpiece! I would put “M” as second best this year as it is also a phenomenal film, but I don’t know when it was released in the USA. The academy got it way wrong, but City Lights is still beloved, respected and aired all around the world to this day and no one remembers Cimaron.
Singin’ in the Rain wasn’t nominated for Best Picture. The Best Picture winner went to The Greatest Show on Earth instead beating out the frontrunner High Noon.
Maybe he can do a video on how The Greatest Show on Earth defeated High Noon for Best Picture. In that video, he should mention that Singin’ in the Rain wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture that year.
City Lights should have won Best Picture that year. It makes sense it was shut out at the Oscars considering it’s a comedy and a silent film. Silent films were considered obsolete and outdated back then. Also, Modern Times, another Charlie Chaplin film, got shut out at the Oscars as well. Should have won Best Picture that year. That’s my favorite Chaplin film. Who remembers Cimarron and The Great Ziegfeld, the movies that won Best Picture instead of those Chaplin films anyways?
Brian i love love your videos!! Keep them coming. And fyi, at 1:46 you accidentally said SUNSET instead of SUNRISE, when talking about the (2) best picture winners.
"The Jazz Singer" is not really a talking film. It has only one conversation in it after all - at the piano between Jolson and Besserer, who played his mother. It really did deserve only the honorary award it got for what amounts to engineering. I think I remember reading that silent films were disqualified from competition after the 1928-1929 Academy Awards, and this may be why City Lights was ignored by Oscar.
City Lights is my favourite movie of all times, ahead of Blade Runner, Cinema Paradiso, Big Lebowski, Terminator 2, Matrix, 12 Angry Men, LOTR, The Godfather, Sunset Blvd etc etc etc, and I'm 35. Nothing comes close to City Lights - it is more than a movie, it is a monumental achievement in all of human art form! Suitably or ironically, there are no words powerful enough to describe Chaplin's masterpiece!
I’m going to add the fact that Chaplin was so openly against the studio system because it controlled everything, including the Academy Awards in those days. He co-founded United Artists so he could be more independent.
Thank you for bringing some more attention to this film gem, Brian ! I guess you've shown that the Academy started making blunders ever since its early years. 😂😂
Darn you, Brian. Now I have another movie to add to my watch list! Seriously, I have learned so much from your videos, and I appreciate that this one dives into a significant silent film - I know next to nothing about films from this era.
At least "City Lights," along with "Frankenstein," has stood the test of time. People will still be watching and talking about these films long after the likes of "Cimarron" and "East Lynne" have crumbled to dust. Speaking of "Frankenstein," a "Boris Karloff: Why He Never Won" video might be good, with some attention to performances that SHOULD have earned him a Best Actor nomination (e.g. Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Body Snatcher, Targets).
I admit I love Chaplin’s The Circus - I think it is very funny, touching and quite amazing. The acting is great, it is well written, it has fantastic and hilarious scenes and the end is sad and poignant, but meaningful and beautiful. I love City Lights (who doesn’t?), but The Circus will always be special for me - it was the first Chaplin film I watched.
Literally one of the best movies ever. It stands up aginst most of the Oscar winning pictures of the time and many in general. No one would believe now it wasn't popluar especially compared to what was considred better.Cimmeron makes me shudder .
I hope you can address Hitchcock and Kubrick in future videos and why their work missed out. It seems like the Academy had something against them as well.
Them both not winning directing Oscars is super surprising considering that they’re the top 2 most influential directors of all time. Hitchcock not winning at least one Oscar is one of the Academy’s biggest mistakes. The only thing he got from them was an Irving G. Thalberg Award, not a competitive one. He should have at least won for Psycho, and don’t even get me started that he wasn’t even nominated for Vertigo and North by Northwest.
@@laurajones1773 This is what I'm saying. They obviously didn't like Hitchcock very much, but I don't know why exactly. With Kubrick, I think it's because he left Hollywood to make his films in England and disliked studio interference.
I think the main reason Hitchcock didn’t get much love from the Academy is because of genre bias. He’s nicknamed the Master of Suspense. His films are mostly suspense films and occasionally horror films like Psycho and The Birds. The genres the Academy doesn’t like.
Honestly I'm partial to The Kid from 10 years earlier but I have watched City Lights a number of times and find something new in it each time. That's the mark of a great film. Cimarron? I wasn't able to sit through it once. Love Irene Dunne, but not in that film.
Small caveat correction: The Circus WAS nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay. However, these nominations were removed from the running to give Chaplin that Honorary Oscar instead. It was the first year for the Oscars, so they had a few unusual practices that would now be deemed unthinkable (like the two feature categories). The reason I've always heard for this decision is that The Circus was so good that it would be unfair to the other contestants to allow it in the running. It would've likely won all four. "The Academy Board of Judges on merit awards for individual achievements in motion picture arts during the year ending August 1, 1928, unanimously decided that your name should be removed from the competitive classes, and that a special first award be conferred upon you for writing, acting, directing and producing The Circus. The collective accomplishments thus displayed place you in a class by yourself." (Letter from the Academy to Mr. Chaplin, dated February 19, 1929.)
Note: Wikipedia isn't listing the Best Picture nomination, and just shows the three for director, actor, and screenplay. Other sources do list Best Picture though. I'm not sure which is accurate.
He should have been nominated for this film, even if he lost any and all the categories he would have been up for, it’s a shame he wasn’t even nominated for this film. It’s really amazing how the only competitive Academy Award Chaplin won was for Best Original Score for the film Limelight, 20 years after it was originally released due to the rules of eligibility of the time, especially since the film never had a screening in Los Angeles until 1972, which is a big step in getting a film eligible for an Academy Award and as a result he became an Academy Award winner. I know how a lot of political stuff is why he wasn’t nominated much at the Oscar’s as well as the Academy taking him out of being nominated for Best Actor, Director and Writing for The Circus and gave him an Honorary Academy Award for writing, directing, producing and starring in that film, but it’s still surprising how he was technically nominated 5 times, since the Circus nominations don’t count since they’re removed from the official Academy Award nominations, and just won once and for Scoring Limelight, yet most don’t think of Chaplin as a composer and so people just think of him as a nominee. Sort of like how Kubrick won Best Visual Effects, despite him not doing the Effects for that film as he supervised the team doing the effects to make sure it’s how he wanted them to be, but due to the rules of the category, there could only be one nominee and so the team decided to put Stanley Kubrick’s name as the nominee and as a result he won. Chaplin is one of those people who has an Oscar, but lot of people don’t think he won, particularly when he was nominated 5 times for just three of his films in his career which is just surprising, especially in retrospect. Thank you for detailing why City Lights wasn’t nominated for anything at the Academy Awards Brian, I hope you’re doing well. Have a great day and weekend. Take care!
Not to mention that The Godfather had a more memorable score that year. Sadly, the Academy rescinded The Godfather’s score nomination even though it won the Golden Globe for the score.
One flawed assumption about the academy is that they can, in fact, recognize anything of quality, even if the film bit them about the buttocks. I just saw City Lights for the first time. I dont enjoy silent films but i have to say, this one is excellent. Controversial take, i know.
Until the mid/late 30's it was a very OTHER Oscar time definitely : The studio moguls, most of all Louis B. Mayer from MGM, had the real say in the nominations and winners. At the ceremony one year later for 31/32 Mayer pressured for a recount of Best Actor after Fredric March won for ,Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' (a Paramount production, also very powerful studio at the time) because his studio's candidate Wallace Beery for ,The Champ' didn't. There was only one vote difference in favour of March, so due to the regulations at that time if there was only a vote difference Mayer could push for Oscar's first acting tie. In such an environment ,City Lights' a ,silent' movie (but it had a soundtrack: Very important to point out. Audiences didn't listen to an orchestra playing live to this movie), a comedy (an already biased genre as you put it out correctly) from studio United Artists, that didn't have any power and say over the Academy didn't have a chance of getting nominated and winning at all. There was no power and interest behind ,City Lights' back then. But more importantly is, that we still love and talk about this late ,silent' film as one of the most beloved of all time. It survived and stayed and still receives the love it deserves. And that's more worth than an Oscar in any year.
Indeed! 83 years later. City Lights stood up to the test of time .. seriously, we're in 2024 and Charlie is still stealing our hearts with this brilliant film.
Someday - and maybe you've already done it - you must discuss how the rather clunky Cavalcade won for 1932-1933 with so much good competition. But it seems Oscar never really got the concept of precode anyways. For 1932-1933 Oscar overlooked Duck Soup, The Invisible Man, King Kong, Trouble in Paradise, and Gold Diggers of 1933 in the Best Picture category.
Charles Chaplin was also embroiled in a number of publicized controversies at this point in his life and career. Even the Robert Downey Jr biopic shows this.
Not a fan of "City lights", I saw it only once at film school. My favorite Chaplin movies are "Modern Times" & "The Great dictator". I'm in my forties and never seen a Buster Keaton film yet, you may guess whose team I am on now 😁
I love City Lights. I love Chaplin, in general. And I'm fine with the argument that it is the best film of 1931. But I disagree that '31 was a weak year for films. Leaving aside the weird Academy year and just looking at the calendar year of 1931. Fritz Lang's "M" is utterly brilliant and would be my pick for the best film of 1931. City Lights is a close second. They're almost 1a and 1b. Looking deeper, Monkey Business is one of The Marx Brothers best films and far outshone anything that the Academy nominated in '31. Dracula and Frankenstein set the bar for horror films for decades. And The Public Enemy and Little Caesar gave us the blueprint for gangster films. Genre bias was alive and well very very early in the Academy Awards.
Cimmaron is the worst Oscar Winner with no ?. Some of my favorites without nominations, are His Girl Friday, Paths Of Glory, The Searchers, but there are so many other great movies I could name that didn't get any Oscar nominations as well, would say King Kong, but not sure if there were any special effects type of awards at the time. Do you think his personal life might have had anything to do with not getting nominated at that time?
How about a NEW CATEGORY of videos if you have not thought of it. The opposite! Oscar surprises. Films that did better come noms and wins than was expected by pundits and insiders?
I want a sally hawkins video! Her happy go lucky snub, blue jasmine nomination and the year she lost to Frances, also her BEST performance in Maudie, with Ethan hawke, came out same year as the shape of Water
Interestingly, in my country there is a Chaplin weekly marathon these last weeks (one film every Sunday for a few weeks now). And this week they are airing City Lights. It’s indeed the best film of 1931 - incredibly funny and endearing, great acting, amazing scenes, an absolute masterpiece! I would put “M” as second best this year as it is also a phenomenal film, but I don’t know when it was released in the USA. The academy got it way wrong, but City Lights is still beloved, respected and aired all around the world to this day and no one remembers Cimaron.
City Lights is my favorite film of all time. I watched it in my sister's film class. I cried like a baby.
At least Charlie Chaplin won an Oscar for best original score for Limelight, despite being released during the 70s and an Honorary Oscar.
My favorite Chaplin film and favorite silent film in general! It should’ve won big at the Oscars yet wasn’t even nominated!
You HAVE to do Singin' In the Rain!!!!!!!!!!
THIS, that is one of the most abysmal underperformances ever
Singin’ in the Rain wasn’t nominated for Best Picture. The Best Picture winner went to The Greatest Show on Earth instead beating out the frontrunner High Noon.
Maybe he can do a video on how The Greatest Show on Earth defeated High Noon for Best Picture. In that video, he should mention that Singin’ in the Rain wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture that year.
City Lights should have won Best Picture that year. It makes sense it was shut out at the Oscars considering it’s a comedy and a silent film. Silent films were considered obsolete and outdated back then. Also, Modern Times, another Charlie Chaplin film, got shut out at the Oscars as well. Should have won Best Picture that year. That’s my favorite Chaplin film. Who remembers Cimarron and The Great Ziegfeld, the movies that won Best Picture instead of those Chaplin films anyways?
Just shows Oscars really dont matter! Greatness prevails with or without the awards
This probably took alot of time for research. Thanks Brian, this was another great vid
Yep, CITY LIGHTS is a masterpiece and deserving of this tribute. I admire it more with each passing year.
Brian i love love your videos!! Keep them coming. And fyi, at 1:46 you accidentally said SUNSET instead of SUNRISE, when talking about the (2) best picture winners.
"The Jazz Singer" is not really a talking film. It has only one conversation in it after all - at the piano between Jolson and Besserer, who played his mother. It really did deserve only the honorary award it got for what amounts to engineering.
I think I remember reading that silent films were disqualified from competition after the 1928-1929 Academy Awards, and this may be why City Lights was ignored by Oscar.
City Lights is my favourite movie of all times, ahead of Blade Runner, Cinema Paradiso, Big Lebowski, Terminator 2, Matrix, 12 Angry Men, LOTR, The Godfather, Sunset Blvd etc etc etc, and I'm 35. Nothing comes close to City Lights - it is more than a movie, it is a monumental achievement in all of human art form! Suitably or ironically, there are no words powerful enough to describe Chaplin's masterpiece!
I’m going to add the fact that Chaplin was so openly against the studio system because it controlled everything, including the Academy Awards in those days. He co-founded United Artists so he could be more independent.
Thank you for bringing some more attention to this film gem, Brian ! I guess you've shown that the Academy started making blunders ever since its early years. 😂😂
The Women from 1939 comes to mind because that was a box office hit but, that was such a golden year for cinema that it just got completely ignored.
One of my favorite movies!
Darn you, Brian. Now I have another movie to add to my watch list! Seriously, I have learned so much from your videos, and I appreciate that this one dives into a significant silent film - I know next to nothing about films from this era.
"City Lights" is hands down one of the best films ever made.
No1
At least "City Lights," along with "Frankenstein," has stood the test of time. People will still be watching and talking about these films long after the likes of "Cimarron" and "East Lynne" have crumbled to dust.
Speaking of "Frankenstein," a "Boris Karloff: Why He Never Won" video might be good, with some attention to performances that SHOULD have earned him a Best Actor nomination (e.g. Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Body Snatcher, Targets).
I admit I love Chaplin’s The Circus - I think it is very funny, touching and quite amazing. The acting is great, it is well written, it has fantastic and hilarious scenes and the end is sad and poignant, but meaningful and beautiful. I love City Lights (who doesn’t?), but The Circus will always be special for me - it was the first Chaplin film I watched.
We don't get movies like chaplin's, buster keaton's, marx brothers anymore
Literally one of the best movies ever. It stands up aginst most of the Oscar winning pictures of the time and many in general. No one would believe now it wasn't popluar especially compared to what was considred better.Cimmeron makes me shudder .
I hope you can address Hitchcock and Kubrick in future videos and why their work missed out. It seems like the Academy had something against them as well.
Them both not winning directing Oscars is super surprising considering that they’re the top 2 most influential directors of all time. Hitchcock not winning at least one Oscar is one of the Academy’s biggest mistakes. The only thing he got from them was an Irving G. Thalberg Award, not a competitive one. He should have at least won for Psycho, and don’t even get me started that he wasn’t even nominated for Vertigo and North by Northwest.
@@laurajones1773 This is what I'm saying. They obviously didn't like Hitchcock very much, but I don't know why exactly. With Kubrick, I think it's because he left Hollywood to make his films in England and disliked studio interference.
I think the main reason Hitchcock didn’t get much love from the Academy is because of genre bias. He’s nicknamed the Master of Suspense. His films are mostly suspense films and occasionally horror films like Psycho and The Birds. The genres the Academy doesn’t like.
Honestly I'm partial to The Kid from 10 years earlier but I have watched City Lights a number of times and find something new in it each time. That's the mark of a great film. Cimarron? I wasn't able to sit through it once. Love Irene Dunne, but not in that film.
Small caveat correction: The Circus WAS nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay. However, these nominations were removed from the running to give Chaplin that Honorary Oscar instead. It was the first year for the Oscars, so they had a few unusual practices that would now be deemed unthinkable (like the two feature categories). The reason I've always heard for this decision is that The Circus was so good that it would be unfair to the other contestants to allow it in the running. It would've likely won all four.
"The Academy Board of Judges on merit awards for individual achievements in motion picture arts during the year ending August 1, 1928, unanimously decided that your name should be removed from the competitive classes, and that a special first award be conferred upon you for writing, acting, directing and producing The Circus. The collective accomplishments thus displayed place you in a class by yourself." (Letter from the Academy to Mr. Chaplin, dated February 19, 1929.)
Note: Wikipedia isn't listing the Best Picture nomination, and just shows the three for director, actor, and screenplay. Other sources do list Best Picture though. I'm not sure which is accurate.
He should have been nominated for this film, even if he lost any and all the categories he would have been up for, it’s a shame he wasn’t even nominated for this film. It’s really amazing how the only competitive Academy Award Chaplin won was for Best Original Score for the film Limelight, 20 years after it was originally released due to the rules of eligibility of the time, especially since the film never had a screening in Los Angeles until 1972, which is a big step in getting a film eligible for an Academy Award and as a result he became an Academy Award winner. I know how a lot of political stuff is why he wasn’t nominated much at the Oscar’s as well as the Academy taking him out of being nominated for Best Actor, Director and Writing for The Circus and gave him an Honorary Academy Award for writing, directing, producing and starring in that film, but it’s still surprising how he was technically nominated 5 times, since the Circus nominations don’t count since they’re removed from the official Academy Award nominations, and just won once and for Scoring Limelight, yet most don’t think of Chaplin as a composer and so people just think of him as a nominee. Sort of like how Kubrick won Best Visual Effects, despite him not doing the Effects for that film as he supervised the team doing the effects to make sure it’s how he wanted them to be, but due to the rules of the category, there could only be one nominee and so the team decided to put Stanley Kubrick’s name as the nominee and as a result he won. Chaplin is one of those people who has an Oscar, but lot of people don’t think he won, particularly when he was nominated 5 times for just three of his films in his career which is just surprising, especially in retrospect. Thank you for detailing why City Lights wasn’t nominated for anything at the Academy Awards Brian, I hope you’re doing well. Have a great day and weekend. Take care!
Not to mention that The Godfather had a more memorable score that year. Sadly, the Academy rescinded The Godfather’s score nomination even though it won the Golden Globe for the score.
One flawed assumption about the academy is that they can, in fact, recognize anything of quality, even if the film bit them about the buttocks. I just saw City Lights for the first time. I dont enjoy silent films but i have to say, this one is excellent. Controversial take, i know.
Until the mid/late 30's it was a very OTHER Oscar time definitely : The studio moguls, most of all Louis B. Mayer from MGM, had the real say in the nominations and winners. At the ceremony one year later for 31/32 Mayer pressured for a recount of Best Actor after Fredric March won for ,Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' (a Paramount production, also very powerful studio at the time) because his studio's candidate Wallace Beery for ,The Champ' didn't. There was only one vote difference in favour of March, so due to the regulations at that time if there was only a vote difference Mayer could push for Oscar's first acting tie.
In such an environment ,City Lights' a ,silent' movie (but it had a soundtrack: Very important to point out. Audiences didn't listen to an orchestra playing live to this movie), a comedy (an already biased genre as you put it out correctly) from studio United Artists, that didn't have any power and say over the Academy didn't have a chance of getting nominated and winning at all. There was no power and interest behind ,City Lights' back then. But more importantly is, that we still love and talk about this late ,silent' film as one of the most beloved of all time. It survived and stayed and still receives the love it deserves. And that's more worth than an Oscar in any year.
Chaplin received a SPECIAL oscar in the first awards presentation in 1928.........for his film "The Circus"
Indeed! 83 years later. City Lights stood up to the test of time .. seriously, we're in 2024 and Charlie is still stealing our hearts with this brilliant film.
Someday - and maybe you've already done it - you must discuss how the rather clunky Cavalcade won for 1932-1933 with so much good competition. But it seems Oscar never really got the concept of precode anyways. For 1932-1933 Oscar overlooked Duck Soup, The Invisible Man, King Kong, Trouble in Paradise, and Gold Diggers of 1933 in the Best Picture category.
Charles Chaplin was also embroiled in a number of publicized controversies at this point in his life and career.
Even the Robert Downey Jr biopic shows this.
Yo! I forgot about The Son! Cant wait for that vid
Not a fan of "City lights", I saw it only once at film school. My favorite Chaplin movies are "Modern Times" & "The Great dictator". I'm in my forties and never seen a Buster Keaton film yet, you may guess whose team I am on now 😁
Genre bias has been alive and well for 95 years at the Academy and will likely continue for infinity! 🤬😠
Imagine Singin in the Rain losing in a music category
I love City Lights. I love Chaplin, in general. And I'm fine with the argument that it is the best film of 1931. But I disagree that '31 was a weak year for films. Leaving aside the weird Academy year and just looking at the calendar year of 1931. Fritz Lang's "M" is utterly brilliant and would be my pick for the best film of 1931. City Lights is a close second. They're almost 1a and 1b.
Looking deeper, Monkey Business is one of The Marx Brothers best films and far outshone anything that the Academy nominated in '31. Dracula and Frankenstein set the bar for horror films for decades. And The Public Enemy and Little Caesar gave us the blueprint for gangster films.
Genre bias was alive and well very very early in the Academy Awards.
PLEASE MAKE A VIDEO ON SAORISE RONAN AND THE ELUSIVE OSCAR PLEASE THANK YOU
Charles Chaplin fun ❤
Cimmaron is the worst Oscar Winner with no ?. Some of my favorites without nominations, are His Girl Friday, Paths Of Glory, The Searchers, but there are so many other great movies I could name that didn't get any Oscar nominations as well, would say King Kong, but not sure if there were any special effects type of awards at the time. Do you think his personal life might have had anything to do with not getting nominated at that time?
When King King was released, the visual effects and score categories didn’t exist yet.
For me, there are at least a dozen Best Pic winners I would never want to rewatch. Cimarron was not among those.
Infant mediums
One hundred light 💡 Hours
Ten thousand seconds
#haiku #film #audience
Interesting!
Do the searchers e vertigo
Vertigo was criminally snubbed at the Oscars. It only got 2 technical nominations.
How about a NEW CATEGORY of videos if you have not thought of it. The opposite! Oscar surprises. Films that did better come noms and wins than was expected by pundits and insiders?
Great idea!!
Is it wrong that i was rooting for Jean Hagens character in Singing in the Rain. Reynolds is just annoying to me.
...ha..ha..skippy..ha ha ha..skippy...
I find his films boring, except for watching Paulette Goddard in "Modern Times."
I want a sally hawkins video! Her happy go lucky snub, blue jasmine nomination and the year she lost to Frances, also her BEST performance in Maudie, with Ethan hawke, came out same year as the shape of Water