90City Lights (1931)

Despite the advent of sound, Charlie Chaplin made this silent classic in which his Little Tramp meets and falls for a blind flower girl, for whom he goes to great lengths to find the funds to restore her sight. Among the comic set pieces Chaplin created for his character was a boxing match with a man twice his size. The film was nearly three years in the making. According to the official Chaplin website charliechaplin.com, the script went through many changes but from the start Chaplin wanted to make a film about blindness, and “from this he moved to the idea of a blind girl, who builds up a romanticised image of the little man who falls in love with her and makes great sacrifices to find money for her cure.” In the story, the flower girl mistakes Chaplin for a millionaire until her sight is restored in the end and she finally sees The Tramp. With Chaplin in close-up, the shot is one of the most indelible and moving endings in cinematic history.