City Lights

City Lights centres on a tramp, played by Charlie Chaplin, who becomes attached to a blind young woman selling flowers on the street. Because of a misunderstanding she takes him for a wealthy man, and he does nothing to correct the impression. When he learns that an operation could restore her sight, he sets out to raise the money for it, a goal made harder by his poverty and by the erratic behaviour of an eccentric millionaire whose friendship comes and goes. Virginia Cherrill plays the flower girl, with Florence Lee as her grandmother, Harry Myers as the millionaire and Al Ernest Garcia as his butler.

Chaplin directed, produced and wrote the screenplay with Harry Crocker and Harry Carr. It was his sixteenth film as director in chronological order, following The Circus and preceding Modern Times. He made it as a silent film with synchronised music and sound effects at a time when talking pictures were becoming the norm, and it was shot for United Artists on a budget of about two million dollars.

It remains one of the most widely seen films of its era. On IMDb it holds 8.5 out of 10 from around 216,000 votes, while on TMDB it has 8.2 from roughly 2,500 votes. A critics' rating of 9.6 from 59 reviews is markedly higher than the audience scores.