"Limelight" is perhaps Charlie Chaplin's most personal movie after "The Kid", and it is no surprise that the film is set in the early century, in London's poorest district, for this setting is instrumental to Chaplin's revisiting the long way he had come ever since he left the town's misery when the century was young and so was he. And if we dared to extend that logic, we'd see in the lucid resignation of Calvero and the acceptation that he is way past his prime, a feeling we have or will all be confronted to when the most of our life will be behind us. "Limelight" is a powerful movie about aging like the master's disciples (and future masters) Fellini or Allen would make in their later years. And it's a Chaplin in his sixties, who can finally take a look back at the old days and ask himself the painful question "Have I still got it?".This makes the context of the film an inevitable key of comprehension: in 1952, the last film made by Chaplin was "Monsieur Verdoux", a smart dark comedy, ahead of its time, about a serial killer that probably took the audience and the critics off guard. Never mind the little peaks of verbal delights the film provided, it was a critical flop. He whom success never deserted ever since he started trolling the Venice auto kids' race in 1914 to his grandiloquent speech in "The Great Dictator" in 1940, the man who became the most instantly recognizable face in the world and the most famous character through his "Little Tramp", had his first missed rendezvous thirty years after his debut.And maybe failure is like some infantile diseases, the later they come, the more devastating they are. With "Monsieur Verdoux"'s ill reception, combined with other personal troubles, and political complications in the midst of the HUAC investigation, Chaplin's legendary aura faded enough to make him undesirable in the very land that made his fortune. Calvero only lost his touch with the public but he doesn't fool us, this is Chaplin as he could have turned out, a veteran clown who used to be a great sensation in the last century but who disappeared and drowned his last hopes and lost dreams in booze. But he's not your usual sad clown, he's quite resigned about himself, so he drinks because being sober makes him somber.Yet, the paradox of Calvero is that he meets a ballerina dancer in a worst medical condition and mental shape. Thereza just attempted suicide, and he saves her life, takes care of her, provides her medical support, food and water, and maybe more valuable assets: encouragement. Thereza, played by Claire Bloom, has lost faith on her talent after a long disease and she's so lacking in confidence she can't even feel her legs. This is the magic of these two outcasts' reunion. One is resigned about the past, one is scared about the future, together their present gets more meaningfulness. One of the film's best scenes is when she's just about to dance but she's stricken by stage fright, he gives him a slap that feels around the world, and her career is launched. The power of "Limelight" is that just when you fear the film becomes too sentimental, you get such similar "slaps". And it never falls in the trap of the love story either (one could fear it given Chaplin's "tastes") but while Thereza is in love with Calvero, he knows this is not meant to happen. It's a fatherly love and it is always about the show. The film is punctuated with many musical acts from Charlie Chaplin, some are imaginary and meet with laughs, they sometimes meet with silence, and naturally, there's this terrible moment when there's no laugh and it's much real. It is a flop, and the devastated face of Calvero at the time where he put his makeup out is just that moment every artist fears. This is the heart of the film, the moment that reveals its cathartic nature, Chaplin exorcises his inner demons and makes a successful story out of failure, and within the story, Calvero's own failure indirectly fuels Thereza with self-confidence and energy. Calvero isn't a frustrated man and acknowledges the talent when he sees it. He leaves Thereza to her dancing and a blooming romance with Neville (a pianist played by Chaplin's son) because he knows it's time to pass the torch. That's how life is done. But the film can't afford to be tragic because the comedy isn't prevalent either, so it finds the perfect note to conclude.One of the film's great offerings, besides Chaplin's autobiographical torments, is the cameo of another silent comedy giant: Buster Keaton, in a role that finally compensates the "wax figure" joke from "Sunset Blvd.". Together, they play a funny and frenetic musical act that suck life out of Calvero. The film closes on his farewell to Theresa, the audience, he dies on stage like a soldier on the battlefield. He surrenders to self-destruction so his heart can never be destroyed by failure.. As he said "I hate the sight of blood, but I can't deny it's pumping on my veins" (and this quote alone proves what a terrific screenwriter Chaplin was).In fact, the film is a wonderful combination of talents from writing to acting, even the musical score is penetrating, and it won the Oscar twenty years after, over "The Godfather" (ineligible because of some technicality). I wonder what reception the film would have gotten from the Academy, if it wasn't boycotted, 1952 was full of film centering on show-business: "The Bad and the Beautiful", "Moulin Rouge", 'Singin' in the Rain" and it was the circus-themed "The Greatest Show on Earth" that won the Best Picture Oscar. So, maybe a film about (and made by) the greatest showman on Earth would have generated the thunderous claps it deserved.

This is a brief review of Charlie Chaplin's last six feature films.A comical take on Lang's "Metropolis" (1927), Chaplin's "Modern Times" opens with the words "a story of industry and individual enterprise, humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness!", an ironic jab at the mantras of industrial capitalism. The film then finds Chaplin reprising his iconic role as "the tamp", a poverty-stricken but lovable outcast whose ill-fitting clothes epitomise, amongst other things, his inability to fit in.The film watches as the tramp struggles to survive in a depressed economy. Like "Metropolis", it satirises labour, management and dehumanising working conditions. Elsewhere life for the worker is seen to be precarious, alternatives to playing the game are but death or prison, giant clocks speak to the daily grid of blue-collar workers, bosses are shown to be obsessed with speed and production, the property class relies on police brutality and all-encompassing surveillance, and the workplace itself is painted as an absurdest torture chamber. The film ends with the tramp on a road, America's future uncertain."Modern Times" made waves when it was released. It was banned in fascist Germany and Italy, then allies of the West, and scorned by those in power in the United States. It was also heavily praised in the Soviet Union and France, particularly by philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merlau-Pony. The film's middle section, which featured Chaplin waving a red flag and unwittingly leading communists and worker unions, would get Chaplin on several government watch-lists.Chaplin followed "Times" with "The Great Dictator". Hollywood studios wanted the film scuttled, so Chaplin financed it himself. It contains two criss-crossing plots, one about a Jewish barber who is essentially persecuted by Nazis, the other about a brutal dictator, a stand in for Adolf Hitler. Funny, scary and sad, the film would rock the US establishment. Hitler was, at the time, a US ally and good for business. What's more, he was viewed by those in power as a tool to destroy communist Russia. For many, Chaplin was a "subverisive" who was "inciting war with an ally". Deemed particularly offencive was a last act speech in which Chaplin urges the people of the world to "love one another", "throw away international barriers" and foster an "international brotherhood". Though deliberately vague, this speech was viewed as inflammatory. Was Chaplin extolling the virtues of the United States or the Soviet Union? Regardless, the US' approach to the conflicts in Europe promptly shifted. It became an ally with Russia, Hitler became the enemy and Germany attacked Russia. In the blink of an eye, "Dictator" went from being sacrilege to prophetic.Chaplin, British, was born into extreme poverty and often found himself sleeping on the streets of London. As such, he identified with his "tramp" character completely, as did millions word-wide, who saw themselves in the tramp: desolate, poor and forever bumbling down life's highways. Prior to shooting "Times", Chaplin would embark on a tour of the world, intent on seeing the effects of poverty. He'd talk to many prominent figures, most notably Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Einstein and Gandhi.As Chaplin grew in consciousness, so would FBI files on Chaplin. He was put under government surveillance and forced to appear before a Senate subcommittee in 1941 where he was accused of being "anti American" and an "unofficial communist". Many newspapers, including the Times, began a campaign attacking Chaplin, and called for his deportation. In the mid 1940s he was charged with the Mann Act and the FBI would collude with newspapers to smear Chaplin as a sex maniac who "perverted American culture". From here on, conservative political pressure groups would attack each new Chaplin release. Some of his films would be boycotted or outright banned. In 1947 he'd be brought before the HUAC committee.Chaplin followed "Dictator" up with "Monsieur Verdoux". A black comedy, the idea for which came from Orson Welles, the films stars Chaplin as a bank clerk who loses his job and so murders women for cash and land. The film's point is explicit: if war is an extension of diplomacy, then murder is the logical extension of business. And so banking terminology is used to rationalise murder, weapons manufactures are idolised and the poor are condemned for trying to play by the rules of the wealthy. "Numbers sanctify!" Chaplain says, pointing to Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the ruthlessness of post-war capitalism; kill millions and you're a hero.Next came "Limelight", Chaplin's ode to silent film. Elegiac and autobiographical, the film stars Chaplin and the legendary Buster Keaton as two fading comedians. A meditation on time's passing, the film's also relentlessly optimistic; man must assert his will, his desires, no matter how glum the times! The film would be banned from several US theatres. Chaplin himself was swiftly banned from entering the US and several of his assets were seized. He'd live in Switzerland henceforth."A King In New York" followed. It finds Chaplin playing an usurped "dictator" who seeks refuge in America. Also autobiographical, the film pokes fun at various aspects of US culture, its irrational hatred of all things left-wing and the way in which humans are both always branding and refuse to look beyond the political, beyond superficial branding, to tolerate even the slightest bit of difference or dissent. Chaplin's son would play a hilarious anarcho-communist, but the film as whole messily mixed silent gags with sound comedy.Chaplin's "A Countess from Hong Kong" confirms that Chaplin's films were moving from the lower to the upper echelons of society. Here Sophia Loren plays a Russian "tramp" who is taken in by a wealthy politician (Marlon Brando). His worst feature, the film watches as "humane" capitalism benevolently absorbs the "detritus" of Russia and Asia. Chaplin accepted an honorary Oscar in 1972. He received the longest standing ovation in Oscar history.8.5/10

. . . as the American Legion watched some old footage of Hitler's pep rallies, and launched a nationwide boycott of LIMELIGHT. Apparently these legionnaires were not bright enough to realize that Charles Chaplin was SPOOFING Hitler when he made his GREAT DICTATOR flick, and they believed Chaplin WAS Hitler! If it wasn't for the war profiteer types (mostly the father\grandpa of two later U.S. presidents--who said crime doesn't pay?) who made a bundle selling Hitler the diesel fuel additive necessary for the Blitzkrieg to work, there would have been millions fewer legionnaires around in the 1950s, as WWII most likely would not have occurred, and the six million Jews gassed would have thrived to the point of quadrupling today's population level for their group. Charles Chaplin was a lonely voice in a wilderness of war profiteers gunning for battle when he spoofed Hitler before the war. The brave young boys--America's best and brightest--got slaughtered off during the subsequent conflict, and the worst and the dullest who survived became easily manipulated legionnaires goaded by the goons Ike christened the "Military\Industrial Complex" into persecuting the man who could have saved their comrades with his timely warning. But what else could you expect, from the sort of righteous folks who did in Jesus, too!

Ever since "The Kid" the British born Charles Chaplin had been a monument of American silent film making. Despite his refusal to concede to the inevitable wind of change in the business he stubbornly continued to make silents in the time of sound. But he finally had to say farewell to the little tramp - only to resurrect another version of him in the essential and daring satire "The Great Dictator". With it Chaplin arrived in the new area, safe and with sound, genius undiminished. "Limelight", made years later in 1952, however marks a crossroads for Chaplin and practically forestalls his swansong. Similar to his "Dictator" he was ahead of his time when he made the picture as it was the last film he managed to produce in the US before he became an unwanted person under the suspicion of supporting un-American intentions..."Limelight" in many ways tells Chaplin's own story about a former vaudeville star now on the path of decline, where the full weight of reality catches up with him. It's a melancholic film about the clown Calvero's struggle, but also one of hope and inspiration when he rescues a suicidal ballet dancer and helps her to regain new courage to face life despite he himself is in a downward spiral. But things are not as simply cut as they seem and triumph and tragedy are closely linked... Together with Chaplin stars an impressive Claire Bloom as the girl saved by Calvero, Nigel "Dr. Watson" Bruce as the impresario harking back to his days as Sherlock Holmes assistant, Chaplin's own son Sydney and last but not least the great former rival and by now completely broke Buster Keaton. The latter in a minor, but pivotal, crucially transcending role as assistant on the side of the great clown. All those autobiographical references are evident and become even stronger when we know that recognition for this masterpiece came only more than 20 years after the release of the film in Europe in form of an US Academy Oscar for best score, which - of course - Chaplin co-wrote. To speak with Calavero's own words: "Limelight" is a story about "the enigma of the heart and the mind"... As was Chaplin: a restlessly creative enigma with heart and mind.