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City Lights is a 1931 American silent romantic comedy-drama film starring, written and directed by Charlie Chaplin. It also stars Virginia Cherrill and Harry Myers. Despite the fact that the production of silent films had dwindled with the rise of "talking" pictures City Lights was immediately popular and is today remembered as one of the highest accomplishments of Chaplin's prolific career. Although classified as a comedy, City Lights has an ending widely regarded as the finest and most moving in cinema history.

The plot centers around Chaplin's tramp, broke and homeless he runs into a drunken millionaire and talks him out of committing suicide. A running gag throughout the film is that when the millionaire is drunk he is the best of friends with the tramp right up until he sobers up and cannot remember him. The millionaire takes to the tramp as his "best friend for life," giving him nice clothes, going to parties and even giving him his Rolls Royce. The tramp meets a poor blind girl whom he sees selling flowers on the street. He falls in love with her and when the girl mistakes him for a millionaire he keeps up the charade.

To keep up the illusion that he is wealthy while the millionaire is traveling abroad in Europe, he gets a job as a street sweeper. The tramp learns that the girl's rent is overdue and she and her grandmother are in danger of being evicted from their apartment. However the Tramp must find a way to raise the $22 overnight after losing his sweeping job. In one of the fuunest and most memorable scenes he enters a boxing contest to raise money for the girl, which also fails. Eventually it is a casual gift of one thousand dollars from the returning millionaire which will pay for not only the rent but also an operation for the girl's eyes the Tramp read about in the paper. Unfortunately like many of the tramp's efforts things go wrong and he is mistakenly accused of stealing the money when the millionaire is sober. The tramp manages to get the money to the girl, telling her that he is going away shortly before he is arrested and imprisoned.

Several months later, the tramp has been released, and, searching for the little flower girl, he goes back to the street corner where he first saw her, but she isn't there..he goes further into the city, next to where the flower girl, with her sight restored, has opened up a flower shop with her grandmother. Every time a rich man comes into the shop the girl wonders if he was her mysterious benefactor. When the tramp sees a flower lying in the gutter he bends over to pick it up and is kicked in the seat of his pants by two schoolboys. The girl laughs and when the tramp turns around he sees her through the store window, he stares in disbelief and joy. The girl jokes to her co-worker that she has "made a conquest." Seeing the flower fall apart in his hand, 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.