City Lights is a 1931 silent film starring Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin who wrote and directed the film also composed the musical score for the entire film which is the only sound heard in the film since the picture has no dialogue.
The Circus, released in 1928, was Chaplin's last silent film to debut before "talkies", which are motion pictures with sound, took over.
27 x 41 inches
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Charlie Chaplin Movies
The Plot: City Lights
Chaplin's Tramp, who is broke and homeless, meets a poor blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) selling flowers on the streets and falls in love with her. The blind girl mistakes him for a millionaire. Since he wants to help her and doesn't want to disappoint her he keeps up the charade.
As the story goes along he saves a millionaire from committing suicide and the running gag throughout the film is when the millionaire is drunk he is the best of friends with the tramp right until he sobers up and can't remember him. Meanwhile the tramp works small jobs such as street sweeping and enters a boxing contest, all to raise money for an operation to restore the blind girl's sight.
In the end it is a casual gift of a thousand dollars from his drunken millionaire friend that eventually pay for the operation that restores the blind girl's sight. Unfortunately like many of the tramp's efforts things go wrong and he is mistakenly accused of stealing the money when the millionaire sobers up. But the tramp manages to get the money to the blind girl, telling her that he is going away on a trip shortly before he is arrested and sent to jail for several months.
The ending is widely acclaimed as one of cinema's most touching. Released from jail, the tramp ends up on the same street corner where the flower girl, her sight restored, has opened up a flower shop with her grandmother; every time a rich man comes into the shop she wonders if this is her mysterious benefactor. The tramp spots a flower in the gutter and as he goes to pick it up is tormented by a couple of kids as the flower girl laughs. Then he turns around, sees her, and stops. She laughs and tells her grandmother she has made another conquest. Seeing the flower fall apart in his hand, she goes out to give him a flower and a coin - and then she touches his hand and stops when she realizes it feels familiar. Slowly her hand goes up to touch the face of the tramp. 'You?' she says as she realizes that the tramp before her is the reason she can see. 'Yes' replies the nervous tramp, his face a map of shame, pride, love and devotion. 'You can see now?,' he asks. 'Yes. I can see now,' she replies (in later prints Chaplin removed the last title card since it was obvious what she is saying). The film ends with an unusual close up of the tramp and the music continues to swell for some time after the shot fades to black.
