E! s Oscar snubs includes City Lights

While I very much agree with where Tom is going with this, Hannah's characterization is, strictly speaking, accurate and descriptively significant.

Absolutely! And significantly, I think. In an evolutionary step beyond the 'kazoo voices' that open CL, all the talking in MT is presented through some sort of mechanical device. And none of it is conversational, thus there is, strictly speaking, no 'dialogue,' only orders and directives or commercial sales pitches. Impersonal speech is there to be sure, but the human interaction of conversational dialogue is totally absent. We *see* interaction, but *hear* only pronouncements.

Crafty indeed. And speaking of craft, I think it interesting that, regardless of how one eventually decides to classify these two films, both of them were shot, from the point of view of their technical aspects, *as if they were* silent films (with the possible exception of the singing waiter scenes in MT), allowing CC the control over pacing and tempo which he had learned to manipulate and utilize so effectively in his earlier (unquestionably) silent works.

Who'da thunk something as 'obvious' as whether a film was silent or not could evoke differences of opinion. Only on a.m.c.

Have to disagree with this

I never looked at it that way, but I think you're right.

Sean http://member.aol.com/SeMurph/index.html

'I & I, in creation where one's nature neither honors nor forgives. I & I, one said to the other, no man sees my face and lives.' B.Dylan

But first he quotes me:

I forget when this occured to me, but it was well after my 20th or so viewing of the film.

It's one of those things where, once you finally notice it, it suddenly seems *so* obvious...

Tom Moran

.. kind of like when you re-read a ng post you wrote (me, ahem, not you) and wonder whether you were suffering from that bad a case vapor-lock all day ...

Hannah (it must have been that Carl Davis' _City Lights_ CD that just came in that cross-circuited my brain)

I think I left out a preposition. '... suffering from that bad a case OF vapor-lock all day...' Sheesh! I may have to review all the work I did today if this is any indication...

One of my favorite 'lines'

I think it was Walter Kerr who pointed out the way Charlie acclimated the audience to the slower movement needed for the nonsense song (for synchronization) by looking around for his lost shirt cuffs and biding his time before singing. That's brilliant also.

I don't have the new book about Charlie's sound films. Does it include CL and MT or does it start with _The Great Dictator_?

Essentially devoted to the talkies, although there is some reference to earlier films.

Connie K.

The films are difficult to categorize in a strict sense. Maybe 'transitional' would do. They remind me of Chaplin's ending to_ The Pilgrim_ with Charlie straddling the border.