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City Lights

2377 votes

A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl. His on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor.

Status: Released

Released Date: 1931-02-06

Runtime: 87 mins

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Spoken language: No Language

Genres: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Original title: City Lights

Production Companies: Charles Chaplin Productions

Production Countries: United States of America

Cast

A Tramp

Charlie Chaplin

A Blind Girl

Virginia Cherrill

Her Grandmother

Florence Lee

An Eccentric Millionaire

Harry Myers

His Butler

Al Ernest Garcia

A Prizefighter

Hank Mann

Street Sweeper / Burglar (uncredited)

Albert Austin

Boxing Fight Referee (uncredited)

Eddie Baker

Mayor / Blind Girl's Downstairs Neighbor (uncredited)

Henry Bergman

Bald Party Guest (uncredited)

Buster Brodie

Diner in Restaurant (uncredited)

Jeanne Carpenter

Boxer (uncredited)

Tom Dempsey

Street Sweepers' Foreman (uncredited)

James Donnelly

Newsboy (uncredited)

Ray Erlenborn

Reviews

Geronimo1967

Virginia Cherrill charmingly plays a young, blind, flower seller whom the tramp (Charlie Chaplin) falls for, hook line and sinker. Later that night, he is crossing a bridge when he encounters a suicidal, dipso, millionaire (Harry Myers) whom he convinces to hang about for a while longer, and who by way of appreciation invites him to a party at his mansion, then to a series of evening entertainments. Thing is, when he wakes up with the mother of all hangovers next morning, though, he has never a clue who the tramp is and so gets his butler to send him packing. Meantime, still determined to help his new love, our kindly vagrant reads in a newspaper that there might be might be a cure for her blindness - but it will be expensive. His boozy buddy offers him $1,000 to help but when, as usual in the morning, he sobers up and denies all knowledge of the "gift". The police are called and things now take a series of unhappy turns that force the tramp to think of other ways of raising the cash. This challenge is especially spurned on when he discovers that she has left her usual selling spot and is now quite poorly and being taken care of by her grandmother (Florence Lee) - and they are facing eviction. It's probably his attempts at boxing that provide for most of the entertainment here, but there are plenty of other humorous exploits - especially between him and Myers and the scenes with Cherrill are touching and joyous, too. Chaplin keeps the pace moving along well with plenty of variety in a film that's a gem to watch.

2024-07-14

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