It's called visual storytelling.
There's a story in there somewhere, with rich characters harboring compelling motivations which create conflicts that drive a pretty seemless narrative some believe lead up to one of the greatest endings in all of cinema. You just have to look at at it.
Looking at moving pictures on a screen is no different than looking at still letters on a page, in both cases you have to invest in the language of the art. Writers take the time to think about which consonants and vowels sound best together, which words look best together. While others write long flued sentences, others write short paragraphs. Some poets take all that into consideration but choose to write their pieces in paragraphs shaped like faces or buildings for added effect. Just like with the spoken and written word, Cinema is a Language. The rhythm and framing of that closing scene of the film is perfectly timed and executed to envoke the most emotional response imaginable from the viewer by building the proper tension and suspense needed to be satisfying. The way one shot cuts to the next, or the way the camera moves along the sidewalk, is all I intended to be pleasing to the eye, while conveying as much information as about the story as possible. And by using the camera only to tell the story through the characters actions, essentially, Chaplin makes the story truly ABOUT the characters.
Sight is just as important a tool to express and understand information as sound. Films had a language before words came along, and believe it or not it's still being spoken fluently today in everything you watch. Heck, one picture is worth a thousand words, hundreds of ideas. Three Aaron Sorkin film's worth of pathos is in City Lights and there ain't even one walk and talk.
City Lights is literary. It's down right poetry. You just have to look at it, and be willing to see something.
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