City Lights (1931)

Cast:

• Charlie Chaplin, Director/Writer

• Roland Totheroh and Gordon Pollock, Cinematography

• Charlie Chaplin and Willard Nico, Editing

• Arthur Johnston and Alfred Newman, Music

• Virginia Cherrill as the blind girl

• Florence Lee as her grandmother

• Harry Myers as the eccentric millionaire

• Al Ernest Garcia as his butler

• Hank Mann as the prizefighter

• Charlie Chaplin as The Tramp

Background:

• City Lights premiered on January 30, 1931 - 95th anniversary

• On an estimated budget of $1.5 million, the film grossed roughly $4.25 million to finish 17th at the domestic box office for 1931.

• City Lights was widely acclaimed by critics at the time with most praising Chaplin.

• In the years since its release, City Lights has become widely known as Chaplin's best and greatest work.

• In 1952, Sight and Sound magazine revealed the results of its first poll for "The Best Films of All Time"; City Lights was voted #2, after Vittorio DeSica's Bicycle Thieves.

• In 2002, City Lights ranked 45th on the critics' list. That same year, directors were polled separately and ranked the film as 19th overall.

• The Village Voice ranked the film at number 37 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999.

• The film was included in Time's All-Time 100 best movies list in 2005.

• In 2006, Premiere issued its list of "The 100 Greatest Performances of all Time", putting Chaplin's performance as "The Tramp" at No. 44.

• City Lights was ranked seventeenth on Cahiers du cinéma's 100 Greatest Films.

• In the 2012 Sight & Sound polls, it was ranked the 50th-greatest film ever made in the critics' poll and 30th in the directors' poll.

• The film was voted at No. 21 on the list of "The 100 greatest comedies of all time" by a poll of 253 film critics from 52 countries conducted by the BBC in 2017.

• In 2021, the film ranked 16th on Time Out magazine's list of The 100 best movies of all time.

• City Lights has been recognized by the AFI on the following lists:

  • 1998: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – #76

  • 2000: AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – #38

  • 2002: AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – #10

  • 2003: AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains: The Tramp – #38 Hero

  • 2003: AFI's 100 Years... 100 American Movie Poster Classics – #52

  • 2006: AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers – #33

  • 2007: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #11

  • 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10: #1 Romantic Comedy Film

• In 1991, the Library of Congress selected City Lights for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

• City Lights currently holds a 95% among critics on RT, a 99 score on Metacritic, and a 4.3/5 on Letterboxd.

Plot Summary: City Lights, written, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin, is a silent romantic comedy about a kind-hearted Tramp who falls in love with a blind flower girl. When she mistakes him for a wealthy man, the Tramp goes to great lengths to help her, including befriending a troubled millionaire who only recognizes him when he is drunk.

As the Tramp struggles with poverty and bad luck, his love for the flower girl pushes him toward quiet acts of sacrifice. The film blends slapstick humor with deep emotion, building to a famous final scene that reveals the Tramp’s true identity and captures Chaplin’s belief in compassion, dignity, and human connection.

Did You Know:

• Chaplin's penchant for perfection carried over into all aspects of the production. He had a very clear vision as to how every scene should play. Robert Parrish, who had a small part as one of the newsboys who pelt The Tramp with peashooters, remembered in 1991: "Chaplin was a dervish. He would blow a pea from the peashooter, playing both my part and the part of Austen Jewell, the other newsboy. He then would run over and react as the Tramp being hit by it, then back to the newsboys and blow another pea. He would then play Virginia Cherrill's part of the Blind Girl. Then he was the Tramp. Then he would instruct what the background people should be doing. Everyone watched as he acted out all the parts for us. When he felt he had it all worked out, he reluctantly gave us back our parts...I believe he would have much rather played them all himself if he could."

• Chaplin re-shot the scene in which the Little Tramp buys a flower from the blind flower-girl 342 times, as he could not find a satisfactory way of showing that she thought the mute tramp was wealthy.

• Chaplin's personal favorite of all his films. Orson Welles said that this was his favorite movie of all time. Stanley Kubrick named it as one of his favourite films. Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky cited this as his favorite film. Woody Allen also calls it "Chaplin's best picture".

• Chaplin had interviewed several actresses to play the blind flower girl, but was unimpressed with them all. While seeing a film shoot with bathing women in a Santa Monica beach, he found a casual acquaintance, Virginia Cherrill. She waved and asked if she would ever get the chance to work with him. After a series of poor auditions from other actresses, Chaplin eventually invited her to do a screen test. She was the first actress to subtly and convincingly act blind on camera due to her nearsightedness.

• The film was inordinately expensive - in excess of $1.5 million - mainly because Chaplin kept his cast and crew on stand-by for 22 months, even though he only actually shot for 179 days. But it was one of Chaplin's most financially successful and critically acclaimed films despite being released well into the sound era.

Best Performance: Charlie Chaplin (Writer/Director/Star)

Best Secondary Performance: Virginia Cherrill (Flower Girl)/Arthur Johnston and Alfred Newman (Music)

Most Charismatic Award: Charlie Chaplin (the Trump)/Virginia Cherrill (Flower Girl)

Best Scene:

• Harbor

• Celebration Party

• Boxing Match

• Robbery

• Flower Shop

Favorite Scene: Harbor/Boxing Match

Most Indelible Moment: Flower Shop

In Memorium:

• Roger Allers, 76, American film director (The Lion King, Open Season) and screenwriter (Aladdin)

• Kianna Underwood, 33, American actress (Little Bill, All That, The 24 Hour Woman)

• Jefery Levy, 67, American filmmaker (S.F.W., The Key)

• Marcus Gilbert, 67, British actor (Army of Darkness, The Masks of Death, Rambo III)

• Bob Weir, 78, American Hall of Fame musician (The Grateful Dead) and songwriter ("Sugar Magnolia", "One More Saturday Night")

• T. K. Carter, 69, American actor (The Thing, Punky Brewster, Runaway Train, The Way Back, Space Jam)

• Tina Packer, 87, British actress (David Copperfield, Doctor Who) and stage director, co-founder of Shakespeare & Company.

Best Lines/Funniest Lines:

The Tramp: Be careful how you're driving.

The Tramp: Tomorrow the birds will sing.

The Tramp: You can see now?

A Blind Girl: Yes, I can see now.

The Stanley Rubric:

Legacy: 8.25

Impact/Significance: 8

Novelty: 7.5

Classic-ness: 7.5

Rewatchability: 5

Audience Score: 9.35 (92% Google, 95% RT)

Total: 45.6

Remaining Questions:

• What's easier to get a casual fan to watch: an international film or a silent film?