Editing City Lights (section)

===Pre-production===
[[File:City Lights promo still.jpg |thumb|upright=1.2|The Tramp meets the Blind Flower Girl and falls in love.]]
Chaplin's feature ''[[The Circus (1928 film)|The Circus]]'', released in 1928, was his last film before the motion picture industry embraced sound recording and brought the silent movie era to a close. As his own producer and distributor (part owner of [[United Artists]]), Chaplin could still conceive ''City Lights'' as a silent film. Technically the film was a crossover, as its soundtrack had synchronized music and sound effects but no spoken dialogue. The dialogue was presented on [[intertitle]]s.{{Sfn|Kamin|2008|p=136}} Chaplin was first contacted by inventor [[Eugene Augustin Lauste]] in 1918 about making a sound film, but he never ended up meeting with Lauste.{{sfn|Robinson|1985|p=387}} Chaplin was dismissive about "talkies" and told a reporter that he would "give the talkies three years, that's all."{{sfn|Robinson|1985|p=389}} He was also concerned about how to adjust the Little Tramp to sound films.{{sfn|Robinson|1985|p=389}}

In early 1928, Chaplin began writing the script with [[Harry Carr]]. The plot gradually grew from an initial concept Chaplin had considered after the success of ''The Circus'', where a circus clown goes blind and has to conceal his handicap from his young daughter by pretending that his inability to see is an on-going series of pratfalls.{{sfn|Robinson|1985|p=389}} This inspired the Blind Girl. The first scenes Chaplin thought up were of the ending, where the newly cured blind girl sees the Little Tramp for the first time.{{sfn|Robinson|1985|p=391}} A highly detailed description of the scene was written, as Chaplin considered it to be the center of the entire film.{{sfn|Robinson|1985|p=393}}

For a subplot, Chaplin first considered a character even lower on the social scale, a black newsboy. Eventually he opted for a drunken millionaire, a character previously used in the 1921 short ''[[The Idle Class]]''.{{sfn|Milton|2011|p=200}} The millionaire plot was based on an old idea Chaplin had for a short in which two millionaires pick up the Little Tramp from the city dump and show him a good time in expensive clubs before dropping him back off at the dump, so when he woke up, the Tramp would not know if it was real or a dream. This was rewritten into a millionaire who is the Tramp's friend when drunk but does not recognize him when sober.{{sfn|Chaplin|1964|p=325}}

Chaplin officially began pre-production of the film in May 1928 and hired Australian art director [[Henry Clive]] to design the sets that summer. Chaplin eventually cast Clive in the role of the millionaire. Although the film was originally set in Paris, the art direction is inspired by a mix of several cities. [[Robert E. Sherwood|Robert Sherwood]] said that "it is a weird city, with confusing resemblances to London, Los Angeles, Naples, Paris, Tangiers and Council Bluffs. It is no city on earth and it is all cities."{{sfn|Robinson|1985|p=295}}

On August 28, 1928, Chaplin's mother [[Hannah Chaplin]] died at the age of 63. Chaplin was distraught for several weeks and pre-production did not resume until mid fall of 1928.{{sfn|Robinson|1985|pp=296–297}} Psychologist [[Stephen M. Weissman|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.{{sfn|Weissman|2008|p=71–74}} Weissman also compared many of the film's sets with locations from Chaplin's real childhood, such as the statue in the opening scene resembling St. Mark's Church on Kennington Park Road{{sfn|Weissman|2008|p=64}} and Chaplin referring to the waterfront set as the Thames Embankment.{{sfn|Weissman|2008|p=65}}

Chaplin had interviewed several actresses to play the blind flower girl but was unimpressed with them all. While seeing a film shoot with bathing women in a [[Santa Monica]] beach, he found a casual acquaintance, [[Virginia Cherrill]]. Cherrill waved and asked if she would ever get the chance to work with him.<ref name="Independent">{{cite news |last=Vallance |first=Tom |date=November 20, 1996 |title=Obituary: Virginia Cherrill |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/obituary-virginia-cherrill-5591220.html |newspaper=[[The Independent]] |location=[[London]] |access-date=October 20, 2018}}</ref> After a series of poor auditions from other actresses, Chaplin eventually invited her to do a screen test.{{sfn|Chaplin|1964|p=326}} She was the first actress to subtly and convincingly act blind on camera due to her near-sightedness,{{sfn|Weissman|2008|p=67}} and Cherrill signed a contract on November 1, 1928.{{sfn|Robinson|1985|p=398}}