Top 250 Challenge: 184

City Lights (1931)
Number 98 on IMDb's Top 250

The plot concerns Chaplin's Tramp, broke and homeless, meeting a poor blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) selling flowers on the streets and falling in love with her. The blind girl mistakes him for a millionaire. Since he wants to help her and doesn't want to disappoint her, he keeps up the charade. He befriends a drunk millionaire, works small jobs like street sweeping, and enters a boxing contest, all to raise money for an operation to restore her sight. Hilarity ensues. In the end, it is a casual gift of a thousand dollars from his drunken millionaire friend that eventually will pay for the operation that restores the blind girl's sight. Unfortunately, like many of the Tramp's efforts, things go wrong and he is mistakenly accused of stealing the money. He ends up spending some months in jail, but not before getting the money to the blind girl. The ending, widely acclaimed as one of cinema's most touching, brings the flower girl, her sight restored, face to face with her kind benefactor. "You?" she says after recognizing the touch of his hand. "Yes" replies the nervous tramp, his face a map of shame, pride, love and devotion.

Trivia: Orson Welles said that this was his favorite movie of all time. Chaplin re-shot the scene in which the Little Tramp buys a flower from the blind flower-girl 342 times, as he could not find a satisfactory way of showing that the blind flower-girl thought that the mute tramp was wealthy.

Well, this was typical Chaplin, a well-rounded, funny, touching movie.