City Lights

Despite its long and difficult production history, in 1967 Charlie Chaplin told an interviewer, "I think I like "City Lights" the best of all my films."Aesthetically, technologically, and culturally, "City Lights" is a key transitional film in Chaplin's body of work, as the director/writer/actor responded for the first time to sound films and stepped in the direction of the social commentary that would become more overt in "Modern Times" (1936) and "The Great Dictator" (1940). Based on extensive archival research of Chaplin's production records, Charles Maland's "City Lights" offers a careful history of the film's production and reception, as well as a close examination of the film itself, with special attention to the sources of the final scene's emotional power.