City Lights is a 1931 American synchronized sound romantic comedy-drama film written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin.

The story follows the misadventures of Chaplin's Tramp as he falls in love with a blind woman (Virginia Cherrill) and develops a turbulent friendship with an alcoholic millionaire (Harry Myers).

City Lights marked the first time Chaplin composed the film score to one of his productions and it was written in six weeks with Arthur Johnston.

The main theme, used as a leitmotif for the blind flower girl, is the song "La Violetera" ("Who'll Buy my Violets") from Spanish composer José Padilla.

[4] In 1991, the Library of Congress selected City Lights for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

In 1949, the critic James Agee called the film's final scene "the greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid".

The Tramp evades the police long enough to give the money to the flower girl, telling her he will be going away for a time; he is arrested and imprisoned.

Uncredited Cast Chaplin's feature The Circus, released in 1928, was his last film before the motion picture industry embraced sound recording and brought the silent movie era to a close.

As his own producer and distributor (part owner of United Artists), Chaplin could still conceive City Lights as a silent film.

[14] Chaplin officially began pre-production of the film in May 1928 and hired Australian art director Henry Clive to design the sets that summer.

Robert Sherwood said that "it is a weird city, with confusing resemblances to London, Los Angeles, Naples, Paris, Tangiers and Council Bluffs.

While seeing a film shoot with bathing women in a Santa Monica beach, he found a casual acquaintance, Virginia Cherrill.

[21] She was the first actress to subtly and convincingly act blind on camera due to her near-sightedness,[22] and Cherrill signed a contract on November 1, 1928.

[23] Filming for City Lights officially began on December 27, 1928, after Chaplin and Carr had worked on the script for almost an entire year.

[30] Chaplin then shot a sequence that was eventually cut from the film involving the Little Tramp attempting to retrieve a stick that was stuck in a grate.

[35] Approximately seven minutes of test footage of Hale survives and is included on the DVD release; excerpts were first seen in the documentary Unknown Chaplin along with an unused opening sequence.

[46] The main theme used as a leitmotif for the blind flower girl is the song "La Violetera" ("Who'll Buy my Violets") from Spanish composer José Padilla.

A film critic for the Los Angeles Examiner said that "not since I reviewed the first Chaplin comedies way back in the two-reel days has Charlie given us such an orgy of laughs.

"[60] On the other hand, Alexander Bakshy of The Nation was highly critical of City Lights, objecting to the silent format and over-sentimentality and describing it as "Chaplin's feeblest".

In 1949, the critic James Agee wrote in Life magazine, that the final scene was the "greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid.

When the film premiered, Chaplin was much older, he was in the midst of another round of legal battles with former spouse Lita Grey, and the economic and political climate of the world had changed.

Chaplin uses the Girl's blindness to remind the Tramp of the precarious nature of romanticism in the real world, as she unknowingly assaults him multiple times.

[62] Film.com critic Eric D. Snider said that by 1931, most Hollywood filmmakers either embraced sound films, resigned themselves to their inevitability, or just gave up making movies, yet Chaplin held firm with his vision in this project.

[63] In a 1963 interview in the American magazine Cinema, Stanley Kubrick rated City Lights as fifth among his top ten films.

[64] In 1972, the renowned Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky placed City Lights as fifth among his top ten and said of Chaplin, "He is the only person to have gone down into cinematic history without any shadow of a doubt.

"[69] French experimental musician and film critic Michel Chion has written an analysis of City Lights, published as Les Lumières de la ville.

[72] Chaplin's original "Tramp" suit from the film was donated by him to the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles County.

[73] City Lights was released as a dual-format Blu-ray and DVD by the Criterion Collection in 2013, both of which include trailers of the film, archival footage from production, and an audio commentary track by Chaplin biographer and scholar Jeffrey Vance, among others.

[74] 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.

[77] In 1991, the Library of Congress selected City Lights for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".