Charlie Chaplin's moving farewell to the world of silent cinema, City Lights, is a fable as well as an extraordinary social critique filmed in the midst of the 1930 economic crisis. The Tramp is a poor man who helps the poor in an unjust and hypocritical world, all seasoned with a cleverly dosed burlesque spirit.

For this ageless masterpiece, Charlie Chaplin composed all the music and created a soundtrack with various sound effects. As in Wagner's operas, Chaplin devised leitmotifs to accompany each character, with the wanderer's leitmotif presenting a mixture of melancholy and hope. Only the theme of the Flower Girl (the young blind flower girl) is borrowed from La Violetera, a song composed by José Padilla Sánchez in 1915. The latter filed a complaint against the director, who was ordered to pay the composer a large sum of money.

City lights is one of the most beautiful films in the history of world cinema, thanks to its direction, the acting and the message it contains.