City Lights

Movie: City Lights (1931)

AFI List #76 on the 1998 list and 11 on the 2007 list.

My List #34

Starring: Charlie Chaplin

My rating: ˜˜˜˜˜

This challenge is the first time (that I can remember) that I've sat down and watched Charlie Chaplin movies. This was my second, and it was shortly followed by a third.

I really liked this movie. It was cute and sweet. It's classified as a comedy, but it's widely regarded as one of the finest and most moving in movie history, and it was one of Chaplin's personal favorites.

The American Film Institute (AFI) has another list AFI's 100 Years 100 Passions. This movie is listed as #10.

This movie is with Chaplin's character of the Little Tramp. He's broke and homeless and he runs into a millionaire attempting suicide and talks him out of it. A lot of the movie is then centered around this man getting drunk and thinks the Tramp is his best friend, then when he sobers up has him thrown out. But over this time, he gives him nice clothes, money and even gave him his car (until he sobered up).

Now before he saved this man's live he runs into a flower girl who is blind. He immediately falls in love with her. She's selling on a rich street, so she assumes he's a millionaire. He doesn't want to tell her that he isn't. So he uses money the millionaire gave him to buy flowers, and even drove her home in the car.

But eventually, the millionaire goes to Europe, so the Tramp needs to get a job to keep up the illusion that he has money. One day he visits the flower girl to find that she and her grandmother were behind on rent and if they don't pay $22 by morning, they would be kicked out. He loses his job the same day, so he attempts to earn the money by entering a boxing contest. Great scene.

Re-enters the millionaire, who in his drunken states, after hearing about the Tramp's love, not only gives the Tramp enough money to pay rent, but he gives him $1,000 to also help pay for an eye surgery that will restore her sight. But, like always, things go wrong and the Tramp is accused of stealing the money. He's able to escape from the police, make it to the girl's apartment to give her the money, and say he will be gone for a while.

Several months later, he is released and is just walking down the street and ends up in front of a flower shop that the flower girl, now with restored eyesight, owns. He's pushed down in the gutter and they notice each other and he can't keep from staring at her. She feels bad and wants to give him a flower and a coin. Now, I normally don't like to tell ending, but Wikipedia has a great description:

"The girl offers him one of her flowers and a coin. The tramp begins to scurry away then stops and slowly reaches for the flower. The girl then takes hold of his hand and places the coin in. But, in a wonderfully under-played final scene, when she feels his hand, she slowly and beautifully realizes who he is... "You?" she says, and he nervously nods, asking, "You can see now?" She squeezes his hand and whispers, "Yes, I can see now," holding back her tears and appearing uncertain as to how she feels or what to do, as the film closes and fades on Chaplin's emotional smile of love and achievement."

Great love story. Now, going into this I was a little worried about the ending because on the AFI website, in talking about the Top 10 of the 100 Years 100 Passions, it said that 7 of the top 10 features couples that do not end up together at the end. And I was afraid this would be 1 of the 10. However, they don't show you if she accepted him or not. I say she did. I like happy endings, and he just looked so happy.