City Lights

Charlie Chaplin's most perfect film — and arguably the greatest love story in cinema. The Little Tramp falls in love with a blind flower seller who mistakes him for a wealthy gentleman, and he devotes himself to earning the money for an operation to restore her sight. The comedy is sublime: a boxing match where the Tramp uses the referee as a human shield, a drunken millionaire who recognizes him only when inebriated. But it's the final scene that earns City Lights its place in eternity — when the flower girl, her sight restored, finally sees the shabby little man who saved her. Chaplin's face in that close-up contains everything: hope, fear, love, and the knowledge that he can never be what she imagined. Orson Welles called it the greatest scene in the history of cinema. He may have been right.