Charlie Chaplin's Film City Lights

Charlie Chaplin's film City Lights is a comedy of a homeless man and the struggles he encounters. The homeless man gets himself into quite a few predicaments on his mission to help his love, a blind flower girl. This film was in production longer than any other Chaplin film and caused more problems then any other film. Problems and all people still felt City Lights turned out to be a quality Chaplin film.

In this film Chaplin played his usual little tramp character as the homeless man. The little tramp falls in love with a blind flower girl and promises to take care of her when he can hardly take care of himself. The film is a story of the tramps struggles to get money to restore the girls eyesight. He is repeatedly used and abused by the rich "friend" he saved and then bumps into daily. This friend proves to be the means by which the little tramp is able to hold up his promise to his blind flower girl.

City Lights followed a lot of Chaplin's previous films with optimism as a theme and a lot of characters in common. The blind flower girl is portrayed as the beautiful fragile and dependent girl that we have seen in so many Chaplin productions like Gold Rush and The Great Dictator. Also the film has a happy ending and every bad thing is followed up by something good happening. Every time a plan to get money doesn't work out the little tramp runs into his rich "friend" again, who helps him get a little bit closer to his flower girls each time; like buying her flowers, groceries and new eyesight.