11 Facts About City Lights

City Lights is a 1931 American silent romantic comedy film written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin.

City Lights marked the first time Chaplin composed the film score to one of his productions and it was written in six weeks with Arthur Johnston.

City Lights was immediately successful upon release on January 30,1931, with positive reviews and worldwide rentals of more than $4 million.

Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance believes "City Lights is not only Charles Chaplin's masterpiece; it is an act of defiance" as it premiered four years into the era of sound films which began with the premiere of The Jazz Singer .

Psychologist Stephen Weissman has hypothesized that City Lights is highly autobiographical, with the blind girl representing Chaplin's mother, while the drunken millionaire represents Chaplin's father.

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City Lights marked the first time Chaplin composed the film score to one of his productions.

Nevertheless, City Lights became one of Chaplin's most financially successful and critically acclaimed works.

Popularity of City Lights endured, with the film's re-release in 1950 again positively received by audiences and critics.

City Lights was released as a dual-format Blu-ray and DVD by the Criterion Collection in 2013, both of which include trailers of the film, archival footage from production, and an audio commentary track by Chaplin biographer and scholar Jeffrey Vance, among others.

City Lights was ranked seventeenth on Cahiers du cinemas 100 Greatest Films, a 2008 poll of 78 film historians and critics organized by Claude-Jean Philippe.

In 2015, City Lights ranked 18th on BBC's "100 Greatest American Films" list, voted on by film critics from around the world.