A sweet love story ... without talking

City Lights (1931)

Adam’s rating: ★★★1/2 (out of 5)

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Rated: none. 87 min.

No. 76 on AFI 100

No. 11 on AFI 100 reissue

No. 58 on IMDB Top 250

Starring: Charlie Chaplin,
Virginia Cherrill

"City Lights"; No. 76 on AFI 100;
No. 11 on AFI 100 (2008); No. 58 on IMDB Top 250

This might be one of the sweetest love stories I’ve ever seen. At its core, Charlie Chaplin portrays his signature character, The Tramp, and falls in love with a blind girl while trying to help her save enough money to have a surgery that will cure her blindness so that she might see him.

What ensues between their meeting and her cure is hilarious, slapstick comedy that was necessary in the silent-film era. But this movie doesn’t disappoint.

It’s common for the audience to fall in love with The Tramp because he’s always trying so hard – but through no fault of his own, screws up. And that’s how this film goes, as he gets ahead and finds himself in situations to help this poor girl, but then stumbles a few steps back with misunderstandings with the law.

When the girl finally can see again, the two run into one another and it takes her awhile to realize that the little tramp she’s laughing at is actually the kind man who helped her get her vision back and then the light bulb goes off in her head and there’s a sweet denouement to the struggle in the film.

I’m a big fan of this film. I really like it. Not as much as “The Gold Rush,” but this one is up there in terms of the moral of the story and the fact that, like most Chaplin films, it relies solely on action and performance than words – because it is silent.