Slideshow
CITY LIGHTS
U.S., 1931
Written and directed by Charles Chaplin
Starring Charles Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Florence Lee
Approx. 86 min. 35mm.
In the film often described as his most perfect, Chaplin deftly juggles pathos and slapstick, befriending a millionaire who recognizes him only when blotto; and finding employment as an elephant-trailing street cleaner and a frightfully mismatched boxer — all for the love of a blind flower seller. Time Magazine called it “the greatest film of any year,” while James Agee described its final shot as “the highest moment in movies.”
Reviews
“If only one of Chaplin’s films could be preserved, CITY LIGHTS would come the closest to representing all the different notes of his genius. It contains the slapstick, the pathos, the pantomime, the effortless physical coordination, the melodrama, the bawdiness, the grace, and, of course, the Little Tramp — the character said at one time to be the most famous image on earth.”
– Roger Ebert
“The sublime CITY LIGHTS was Chaplin's riskiest and most complicated undertaking, a silent film made just as studios were fully committed to sound. Utilising music and sound effects, it was also a marriage of sentiment and slapstick, the elements of which had to mesh with acrobatic precision. Setting the tone is the opening, in which The Tramp endures a series of self-inflicted run-ins with a gigantic civic monument, a scene that is at once side-splittingly funny, risqué, and beautiful.”
– Molly Haskell, BBC
“This deeply eccentric film stands as the purest and most sublime of Chaplin's masterpieces... Funny, bittersweet, and sensitive on levels that few movies can ever hope to reach, CITY LIGHTS is one of the definitive romances of the big screen, building from episodic slapstick into one of the most moving endings in film.”
– Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club