The story behind City Lights and cinema’s greatest ever final shot

Simply the best?

Of course, there are many rivals who claim the title of the best last shot in movie history. The sighting of the Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes, the slow realization in The Graduate, the freeze-frame finish of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the closing door scene in The Godfather, and Norma Desmond’s request for a close-up on Sunset Boulevard each deserve mention. But none of these are recreated as often as City Lights’ final moments.

Films as diverse as The 400 Blows, This Is England, Gone Girl, and Moonlight all owe a debt to Chaplin, as they all end with characters looking down at the camera. Some films have more overt homages. Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” (1979) ends with the character giving his young girlfriend Tracy a rueful smile after confirming that she is going to London for six months. A year later, in The Long Good Friday, director John McKenzie focused on a gangster played by Bob Hoskins who goes through a series of emotions as he realizes he will be captured and killed by IRA assassins.

Even the ending of Pixar’s Monsters, Inc., the animated film pays homage to City Lights. Rather than depicting Sally and Boo’s reunion, after the entrance to Sally’s bedroom is destroyed and they appear to be separated forever, the film only depicts Sally opening her door, looking around, and hearing Boo’s “Kitty!” And smiling.

Alamy

As is often the case, brevity makes this moment even more powerful. But printing these scenes onto celluloid still requires hours of creativity, skill, talent, and thousands, even millions, of dollars. That was especially true of City Lights. Not only was it Chaplin’s most expensive film, costing $1.5 million to make (about $30 million today, or £22 million), Chaplin spent years developing the story and filming it, hoping it would live up to the immense expectations his work deserved.