When "City Lights" was first released in 1931, Hollywood was still loudly exalting Sound. Press agents were jabbering about the "gigantic strides" of the movie industry. Charlie Chaplin's answer to this in "City Lights" was a few minutes of magnificently incomprehensible gargling, and a first-class musical score composed by Chaplin himself.

Today Chaplin is regarded as something more important than a vastly popular entertainer. He has been labeled a "genius" and an "artist." But the new success of "City Lights" proves that tens of thousands of people still find Chaplin a wonderfully funny little man in baggy pants and derby hat.

At times during "City Lights" the dramatic cliches that Chaplin habitually used become apparent. But Chaplin's superb pantomime seldom allows the plot to become any more, important than a background. A drunken Millionaire befriends Chaplin, and then tosses him aside when he becomes sober; a blind Flower-girl takes him for a "gentleman," and falls in love with him. That is the basis of the plot.

It is pertinent to point out that "City Lights" is not the funniest movie that has ever been filmed, although it has been publicized as such. Several of Chaplin's other pictures contain routines much more humorous. The attraction in "City Lights" is not laughter alone, but a warm balance of comedy and poignancy that only Chaplin can create. The final scene between the Tramp and the Flower-girl, tenderly played by Virginia Cherrill, is a strikingly beautiful example of that balance.

Throughout the movie a bewildered and buffeted Chaplin tries to act with dignity, but somehow he never succeeds. When he is driving a Rolls Royce, he screeches to a stop to race a bum for a cigar butt; yet when he is down and out, he spends his last few cents to buy a flower from a blind girl. There is laughter in "City Lights," but that isn't the sole reason for Chaplin's universal appeal.