City Lights

Cast:
Charlie Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill and Harry Myers


Director : Charlie Chaplin
Year :1931
imdb score : 8.5/10 imdb rank:#61


City Lights is a 1931 American silent romantic comedy film written and directed by Charlie Chaplin, and starring Chaplin alongside Virginia Cherrill and Harry Myers. Despite the fact that the production of silent films had dwindled with the rise of "talking" pictures City Lights was immediately popular and is today remembered as one of the highest accomplishments of Chaplin's prolific career.




Plot:
The plot centers around Chaplin's Tramp, broke and homeless, and a poor blind girl whom the tramp sees selling flowers on the street. He falls in love with her and when the girl mistakes him for a millionaire he keeps up the charade. Earlier in the film he had talked a drunken millionaire out of committing suicide and a running gag throughout the film is that when the millionaire is drunk he is the best of friends with the tramp right up until he sobers up and cannot remember him.
The tramp learns that the girl's rent is overdue and she and her grandmother are in danger of being evicted from their apartment. He begins working small jobs such as street sweeping and in a memorable scene enters a boxing contest, all to raise money for the girl. Eventually it is a casual gift of one thousand dollars from the millionaire which will pay for not only the rent but also an operation for the girl's eyes. Unfortunately like many of the tramp's efforts things go wrong and he is mistakenly accused of stealing the money when the millionaire is sober. The tramp manages to get the money to the girl, telling her that he is going away shortly before he is arrested and imprisoned.
Several months later, the tramp has been released and ends up on the same 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 the girl wonders if he was her mysterious benefactor. When the tramp sees a flower lying in the gutter he bends over to pick it up and is kicked in the seat of his pants by two schoolboys. The girl laughs and when the tramp approaches her to give her the flower she jokes to her grandmother that she has "made a conquest." Seeing the flower fall apart in his hand, the girl hands him one of her flowers, but when she feels his hand, she realizes that it is familiar. "You?" she says, and he nervously nods, then asks, "You can see now?" She squeezes his hand tenderly. She smiles and replies, "Yes, I can see now."

Reviewed by Mr.Thiyaks:

(thiya@livecjobs.com)