Classic ‘City Lights’ Finds New Audience

“I have a message for my dad,” Jane Chaplin said in a shaky voice from the podium of UCLA’s Royce Hall Sunday night. “I love you very much and I’m thinking of you. And welcome home.”

The screening of Charlie Chaplin’s film classic, “City Lights,” with score performed live by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Carl Davis, was an emotional experience.

People exited the theater awed by Chaplin, the ultimate hyphenate: star-writer-director-composer.

“I was never into Chaplin,” said actor Tom Hanks. “You hear about Chaplin, but for the most part what I had seen of his movies were herky-jerky snippets here and there in film appreciation classes in all the junior colleges I went to. But this was a mesmerizing evening at the movies, regardless that it’s 1929, black and white and a square screen.”

“You can’t get more emotion, more pathos in any kind of film,” attested movie producer Ilya Salkind, husband of Jane Chaplin. “To do that today is virtually impossible.”

The event, the first West Coast showing of the film with live music, was also a Chaplin family reunion of sorts. Jane, here from Orlando, Fla., was joined by her brother Sydney, who lives in Palm Springs. The two hadn’t seen each other in years.

Even though Sydney has seen the film about 50 times, he said, he always enjoys the reactions of those who have never experienced its humor and pathos.

The evening raised about $80,000 for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, which plans to screen film classics with live music annually, event chairwoman Hanna M. Kennedy said. Last year was the orchestra’s first such outing with “The New Babylon.”