PROJECT 3 PROPOSAL

The scene that I wish to use is the final scene in Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (1931), in my opinion the greatest scene in all of cinema, or at least my personal favorite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHBHdYgg9fI

In the film, Chaplin plays a penniless tramp who falls in love with a blind woman who sells flowers in a park in the city. At the same time he becomes friends with a millionaire, and is constantly getting in and out of limousines when he meets the girl and is always given money to buy flowers from her, leading her to believe that he is rich. When he discovers in the newspaper a potential cure to her blindness, he refuses on principle to take money and is framed for attempting to steal the necessary amount, though he's been able to deliver a reasonable amount to the woman, enough for the surgery.

In the scene that I wish to use, Chaplin has just returned from jail and is an even shabbier wreck. The girl, now able to see and running a profitable flower shop, does not recognize him, and laughs at him like she might any other beggar. It is not until she touches his hand that she realizes that this tramp has been the one caring for her all along. Chaplin signals to her eyes, asking, "You can see now?" to which she responds, "Yes, now I can see."

Not only is this scene the perfect summation to an extraordinary film but one of the best acted and most moving scenes that I can recall, and I feel very passionately about designing my own score for it. The novelist and film critic James Agee has called it the best acting ever on film. I wholeheartedly agree, and believe that the power lies wholly in the subtlety of Chaplin's direction.

Chaplin scored the film as well.

I would like to bring that same subtlety to my rendition of the score. In the three minute scene, there are only three title cards and none have more than four words to them. The music is not at all heavy handed and makes great use of the violin, a particularly subtle and elegant instrument. I predict one of the greatest difficulties for me will be mimicking the elegance of Chaplin's score without using the same instrument. I suppose that I could still use the violin but alter the music, but I would rather take a different direction and make the score as uniquely mine as possible.

0:00-0:50: I think it is essential to commence the piece with more somber tones, as Chaplin has just been released from prison and his clothes are falling apart. I would ideally use sounds of a harp in this section and render it in a very dark way.

0:50-1:40: Chaplin meets the blind girl right at the :50 mark in the scene. Here the music should be similarly orchestrally dark but slower and with a semblance of hopefulness; even as Chaplin looks at her and recognizes that she does not recognize him, he is happy simply to be in her presence and is pleased that she can see. In Chaplin's score, the juxtaposition between the somewhat hopeful music and the petals falling from his flower is unforgettable, something that I am most looking forward to replicating in my own way. Though I imagine it would be hard to transition from violin to found recordings, I would like to try that here using sounds from the street, as he is in a big city and there are cars going by in the background. I think that grittiness could achieve a similar effect and I will still accentuate it with sounds from the harp.

1:40-2:15: This is a pivotal passage in the scene as it marks the time between their meeting and their recognition of one another, and thus the tone is harder to gauge. I feel that a transitioning from street sounds accentuated by the harp to pure street sounds would engage the viewer more as they recognize the sonic change from an elegant construction to a simpler one and therefore become more invested in what they are watching, which is pivotal in a silent scene.

2:15-3:15: This sound in this scene must start out in a slightly ominous manner, as we are more in the blind girl's world as she attempts to figure out who this man is; at the 2:55 mark, when she recognizes Chaplin, the template for the score should remain the same but it should rise slowly to what eventually becomes an overpowering but still understated crescendo. That will be very hard to achieve but the challenge should be fun. At the 2:15 mark, I will implement sounds of a piano accentuated by hum of an semi-quiet city street that does not have cars consistently running down it in order to ground the viewer in the environment in the scene while bringing out the drama.