Janus Films Presents: Charlie Chaplin
For more information on this film:

City Lights

YEAR:
1931
RUN TIME:
87 min.
FORMAT:
Black & White, Silent with musical accompaniment
RATING:
Not Rated
 “Comes closest to representing all the different notes of Chaplin's genius.” 

-Roger Ebert

City Lights begins with an uproarious skewering of pomp and formality, ends with one of the most famous last shots in movie history and, from start to finish, so completely touches the heart and tickles the funny bone that in 1998 it was named one of the American Film Institute’s Top-100 American Films.

Talkies were well entrenched when Charles Chaplin swam against the filmmaking tide with this classic that is silent except for music and sound effects. The story, involving the Tramp’s attempts to get money for an operation that will restore sight to a blind flower girl, provides the star with an ideal framework for sentiment and laughs. The Tramp is variously a street sweeper, a boxer, a rich poseur, and a rescuer of a suicidal millionaire. His message is unspoken, but universally understood: love is blind.

-synopsis courtesy MK2 & Warner Bros.