In 1927, The Jazz Singer was released, the first feature film to synchronize singing and dialogue with a pre-recorded musical score and sound. In the space of less than three years, sound technology has established itself in the film industry. It is 1931 and Charlie Chaplin, one of the greats of the silent era, had just completed City Lights, provocative in its silence in the sound era. However, it would be an understatement to say that Chaplin completely despised sound technology without considering how it would contribute to his style (Flom, 61). The reality was that City Lights represented the beginning of Chaplin's gradual integration into sound and appropriation of sound into his characteristic Chaplinesque style (Flom, 63). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Critics such as Eric L. Flom and Donna Kornhaber have championed Chaplin's distinctive cinematic style and his creative integration of sound with his pantomime style. This essay will reiterate and build on the prevailing discourse on the use of sound in City Lights (1931), through a deeper textual and theoretical analysis of the film, informed by Fran Apprich's article “Born into Sound”. The essay will use Apprich's image-sound approach to City Lights, to explain how Chaplin skillfully plays with silence and selective sound, the substitution of dialogue and sound, and the precision of the musical score in tandem with images to underline the alienation of the Tramp figure and to elevate sentimental melodrama (Woal 5). Finally, the essay will present an analysis of Chaplin's unconventional use of the shot/reverse shot convention, thus demonstrating that the powerful economy of Chaplin's visual style dispenses with the need for conventional use of sound and dialogue, to paradoxically allow a more liberating unconventional use. of sound. In his article “Born into Sound”, Apprich argues for the concept of 'neutralisation' and 'visibility' which this essay will use to analyze the selective use of non-diegetic sound effects and the foregrounding 'visibility' of sound in silence. An image or sound could be neutralized if taken out of its original context and then merged with another image or sound. This is presented in the film through the creative replacement of conventional dialogue with soundtrack and non-diegetic sound effects. Furthermore, Apprich argues that the power of images can evoke the imagination of an associated sound, even in the absence of it, and that it is this imagined sound that allows for possibilities of meanings, between imagined sound and image, diegetic and non-diegetic. sound, with imagined sound. The concept of visibility was based on Balaz's belief that the normalization of sound or music within a film made the use of silence or the use of a singular sound placed between the silence even more evident. The article will briefly reference these ideas put forward by Apprich when discussing the film's use of sound to further the current discourse on city lights. In City Lights, the Tramp meets a blind flower girl, but a misunderstanding leads the blind girl to think that the Tramp is a rich man. The Tramp then befriends a millionaire and saves his life, but the millionaire only recognizes the Tramp as his friend in a state of inebriation. Meanwhile, the Tramp continues to support the flower girl's idealization of him by borrowing money from his millionaire friend or working to provide for the girl financially. In an attempt to get money for the girl's rent and to pay for an operation to restore her sight, he manages to borrowenough money from the millionaire. However, after recovering, the millionaire accuses him of stealing the money and incites the police to chase the tramp. The Tramp manages to get the girl the money, but tells her he is leaving. The police capture him and he is imprisoned for a few months. After his release, the Tramp tries to find the girl but she is no longer on his corner selling flowers. As he walks down the street, the girl, now sighted, takes pity on him and gives him flowers. She then recognizes him as her benefactor after touching his hand and hearing his voice. The film then ends with their ambiguously bittersweet reunion. In the opening sequence, the sound of the kazoo replaces the voice of government personnel, who are making a public presentation of the statues. It has a comedic effect in ridiculing political figures, but it also makes a larger conceptual point in undermining the nature of dialogue, particularly the use of dialogue by people in power. This suggests that the boring political rhetoric of the leaders, incomprehensible to the masses, actually translates into gibberish in the film. Alternatively, by opening with such a scene, it can also be read as Chaplin's sarcastic take on the newness of sound in the film industry (Kornhaber 195). A close reading of the meeting sequence between the blind flower girl and the tramp reveals the subtleties of emotions, skillfully intensified through the sensitive use of soundtrack, silence, and precise movement of the figures (Preminger 172). The subtle tonal shifts in the soundtrack serve to excite the characters, an affective form of language that transcends the limits of speech and dialogue. In the Tramp's significant awareness that the flower girl is blind, the soundtrack pauses for a significant moment of silence. Shocked, the tramp places the flower on the girl's hand. The music resumes at a slower pace, as if to reflect the hesitant tenderness of the Tramp's behavior towards the flower girl. We next note that the audience's sonic imagination forms the premise of the film, which is the idealization of the blind girl from The Rich Man (Davis 55). The cause of this misunderstanding is explained visually in the sequence of their meeting, eliding exposition or dialogue. The Tramp gets in and out of an expensive limousine to avoid a policeman, but the blind girl hears the car door the Tramp exits slam and assumes he is a rich man. Here, visual movement allows the audience to imagine the implied "sound" of the door slamming (Brownlow, Unknown Chaplin). More importantly, it serves the narrative as the ensuing drama relies on the narrative plausibility of the misunderstanding. This misunderstanding is reiterated when the rich man's owner returns to get his car, slams the door and drives away. The camera pan makes it easier to see this misunderstanding by moving across the screen to the left, to frame the tramp standing next to the car before it drives off, before panning back to show the girl calling out to him. The simplicity of this misperception deepens the comic pathos of the idealization of the blind girl, which is so precariously dependent on the auditory construction of the Tramp as a rich man. The soundtrack also serves a more explicit linguistic function, as is evident in the exchange between the millionaire and the tramp (Kornhaber 189). In convincing the millionaire not to take his own life, the Tramp launches into a mini speech, and the soundtrack changes accordingly to reflect a soothing and pleasant melody, while the title card reads "Tomorrow the birds will sing". After that, Tramp straightens his posture to enact the stern speech ofencouragement; the soundtrack follows suit, sharp notes from the strings as the title card reads “Be brave! Face life!”. The substitution of the soundtrack draws attention to the affective power of music, while the welding of music with expressive actions creatively expresses emotions in a way that transcends conventional dialogue. Sound effects are used selectively, serving as an auditory foreground as it draws attention to specific points in the frame. However, the artistic choice of selectivity is deliberately non-naturalistic, and therefore self-reflexive 'visibility'. In the second party scene, Chaplin accidentally swallows a whistle and develops uncontrollable hiccups that sound like the whistle he swallowed. The whistle interrupts the professional singer just as he is about to sing. Here, the "visibility" of the whistle sound is accentuated, so much so that it is the only sound we hear; we do not hear the surrounding noises of the party scene, and ironically, we can never hear the singer (Kornhaber 189). Therefore, this visible and neutralized sound, placed in conflict with the imaginary bustle of the party and made visible against the silence, highlights the Tramp's comic alienation. As spectators, or listeners, we also cannot "hear" the surrounding noises, so Chaplin creates this separate auditory dimension that puts us attuned to the Tramp as an outsider figure in high society (Preminger 169). It is through the use of this sonic foreground that Chaplin economically conveys alienation, without the use of dialogue or conventional sounds. In the final scene, Chaplin reappropriates the usual shot/reverse shot convention to heighten the emotions of the scene and to subtly convey the unequal power dynamics (Kornhaber 202). It's a medium shot shot directly from behind the flower girl, with the Tramp's body facing directly towards the camera but with his eye line matching that of the girl. The flower girl is sitting, with her body at a 45-degree angle to the screen left, but she turns to look at the tramp, such that we only see the back of her head. As such, the camera angle exposes and highlights the Tramp's vulnerability. His facial expression is fully captured, an unbridled smile of joy at finding her again. He holds up the flower feelingly and stares in wonder at the flower girl, whose face is turned away from the camera. The camera then pans to her, alone in a separate shot, laughing and ridiculing him with a sarcastic caption: "I've made a conquest!" Visually, this represents their relationship, the flower girl is like a disinterested spectator, maintaining a safe and judgmental distance while the Tramp stands, vulnerable and exposed (Calhoon 393). Their interaction is a direct reversal of their first meeting, with the flower girl now in a position of power. This is also represented visually by the indirect correspondence of her eye line with the screen left when the camera focuses on her, as opposed to the Wanderer who looks directly at her. This unnatural distortion of the usual shot/reverse shot convention creates visual discomfort, reflecting the painful and unequal power dynamic between the two characters. It is only when the flower girl touches the Tramp's hands that the power dynamic is equalized. Cleverly, Chaplin reverses the shot to visually represent this change. When she holds his hand to give him a coin and a new flower, she experiences a moment of recognition. This shot is framed more conventionally, adhering to the 180 degree rule in the shot/reverse shot tradition; is positioned next to the Wanderer, with his body in. 3-15.