City Lights 1931

The story

A new monument, "Peace and Prosperity", is unveiled before a crowd, and when the cloth comes off the Tramp is asleep in the lap of the central statue. Chased away, he meets a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill) on a street corner. A car door slams nearby, and she takes him for the rich man who owns the car. He buys a flower and does not correct her.

That night, by the river, he stops a drunk millionaire (Harry Myers) from drowning himself. The two end up in the water twice. Sober, the millionaire does not know him; drunk, he treats him as a best friend, with champagne, a car and a house. The Tramp learns that the girl and her grandmother face eviction, and that an operation might cure her blindness. He sweeps streets and fights a boxing match for money. In the end the millionaire, drunk again, gives him the sum, and the Tramp is arrested as a thief when the millionaire sobers up. The girl has her sight back by the time he is free.

A silent film made after sound

Talking pictures had arrived in 1927 with The Jazz Singer. When Chaplin began City Lights in December 1928, most of Hollywood was converting its studios. He did not. By Robinson's account he was dismissive of the talkies, said they would last about three years, and doubted that the Tramp could speak without losing his appeal. His biographer Jeffrey Vance has called the film an act of defiance.

It is not wholly silent. The AFI Catalog lists a recorded soundtrack on the Western Electric system, with a score and a handful of effects: the officials' voices at the start, a whistle swallowed at a party, pistol shots and the bell in the boxing ring. The speeches at the unveiling are the joke. The mayor "talks" in a kazoo-like quack and a woman civic leader in a squawk, so that the talkies are mocked in the first minutes by the sound of talking. Later the Tramp swallows a whistle, and every hiccup sets it off.

Chaplin wrote the score himself, the first he composed for one of his own films. By his own account, as quoted by Robinson, he hummed the tunes and Arthur Johnston wrote them down. Alfred Newman directed the recording, and the flower girl's theme is "La Violetera" by José Padilla. Padilla is said to have won a claim over the lack of credit.

Two years on one street

The AFI Catalog dates the start of production to 27 December 1928. Robinson dates the end of the millionaire scenes to 29 September 1929, the final scene to September 1930 and the editing to October to December 1930. The budget is usually given as $1.5 million. The official Chaplin archive calls the film the hardest and longest undertaking of his career.

The famous delay was the flower girl's first scene. Chaplin could not find a way, without a word, to make her believe the Tramp was rich. The answer he settled on was the parked limousine: he passes through it, the door slams, and she hears the sound. The scene runs about three minutes. Guinness World Records counts 342 takes, by one account shot over five days.

The cast changed on the way. Henry Clive was first cast as the millionaire and was dismissed, by the AFI Catalog, after refusing to fall into the water; Harry Myers took over. Chaplin was angry with Cherrill in late 1929, tested other actresses, among them Marian Marsh, and considered giving the part to Georgia Hale, his co-star in The Gold Rush. Cherrill came back, by most accounts on a higher wage.

Premiere, Einstein and the Cohan

The film had its gala at the Los Angeles Theater on 30 January 1931, the first such premiere held downtown rather than in Hollywood, by the AFI Catalog. Chaplin came with Georgia Hale and with his guests, Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa, and it is said the audience stood to applaud.

In New York the AFI Catalog gives 6 February 1931, though sources differ. United Artists had given it little publicity, so Chaplin rented the George M. Cohan Theater himself and, by one account, spent $60,000 of his own money on advertising. It ran there for twelve weeks and made a net profit of over $400,000. Variety later reported rentals of $4.25 million worldwide.

Who owns it

On the 95-year term that applies in the United States, a film published in 1931 enters the public domain there on 1 January 2027, as the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain counts the term. Until that day the film is protected there.

The picture is different in Europe. In the EU and the UK, copyright generally runs for seventy years after the author's death, and Chaplin died in 1977, so a film he wrote, directed and scored is protected to the end of 2047. Roy Export, the company that holds his films, says that all photographs from his films made from 1918 on are its property.

Copyright and trade marks are separate things. Roy Export and Bubbles Inc. also hold trade marks in the Little Tramp, in Chaplin's name and in certain film titles, and these do not expire when a film's copyright does. This page links only to where the film can be streamed, rented or bought.

Why it matters

It is the ending that critics keep returning to. The girl, her sight restored, takes the Tramp's hand and knows him by touch. He has no words, and the film needs none. Its last close-up is often counted among the finest in cinema, and it is the reason this film is so often ranked above his others.

It held out against sound and did well. A film without dialogue, released four years into the talkies, ran for twelve weeks in New York and won the National Board of Review's prize for the best film of 1931.

It shows what a perfectionist costs. A scene of three minutes took 342 takes, and the whole film took the better part of two years.

It is the recognised classic. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 1991. The American Film Institute placed it 76th in 1998 and 11th in 2007, and ranked it first among romantic comedies in 2008.