Tag Archives: City Lights

SF Silent Film Festival Returns to Live Cinema with Chaplin’s City Lights

Posted on February 5, 2022 by John Bengtson

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival returns to presenting live cinema this February 19 at the Paramount Theater with the Oakland Symphony Orchestra accompanying Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece City Lights (1931), conducted by Timothy Brock. You may order tickets HERE. Along … Continue reading →

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The Remarkable Charlie Chaplin Archives

Posted on November 8, 2020 by John Bengtson

The Charlie Chaplin Archives, housed in Bologna and accessible online, hosts thousands of rare photographs, production logs, scripts, and other fascinating studio records and documentation from Chaplin’s life and long career. Pick a favorite film, or subject of interest, and … Continue reading →

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Keaton’s Missing Scene and Cameraman Tricks

Posted on February 1, 2020 by John Bengtson

Early in The Cameraman (1928) neophyte newsreel photographer Buster Keaton submits his double-exposed mistake-filled audition movie footage to the M-G-M Newsreel General Offices in ‘New York,’ resulting in a complete disaster. At left, Buster watches in horror as his double-exposed … Continue reading →

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Harry Houdini Solves a Charlie Chaplin Mystery!

Posted on September 12, 2019 by John Bengtson

Harry Houdini helped to discover where Charlie Chaplin filmed crucial scenes for his very first movie Making a Living (1914). The initial scene of Charlie’s entire career (below), discovered by Kevin Dale and reported HERE, was staged in front of … Continue reading →

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The Artist and its Amazing Ties to Chaplin, Pickford, Keaton and Lloyd

Posted on March 3, 2015 by John Bengtson

Tonight marks the Turner Classic Movie Channel premiere of the 2011 multi-Oscar-winning Best Picture The Artist. Depicting the silent movie era, and filmed on location in Hollywood, the movie has many amazing connections to early Hollywood history and its biggest … Continue reading →

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New City Lights Release – Discoveries and Assumptions

Posted on November 13, 2013 by John Bengtson

Here’s a new location discovery to celebrate the Criterion Collection Blu-ray release of Charlie Chaplin’s 1931 masterpiece City Lights.  The scenes where Charlie reports to work as a street sweeper, and where he also learns there is money to be … Continue reading →

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Chaplin’s Beverly Wilshire Cigar

Posted on May 3, 2011 by John Bengtson

During one of my favorite jokes from City Lights, Charlie spies a cigar butt on the sidewalk while driving around in his millionaire friend’s luxury car.  Charlie leaps from the car, grabs the butt before another bum can take it, … Continue reading →

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