Main Cast: Charles Chaplin, Claire Bloom, Nigel Bruce, Sydney Chaplin, Andre Eglevsky, Melissa Hayden, Buster Keaton
Release Year: 1952
Country: US
Run Time: 150 minutes
MPAA Rating: G
Plot
London, 1914. Calvero (Charles Chaplin), a once-great music hall comedian, weaves drunkenly home to his shabby flat. As he arrives home, he is suddenly sobered by a bad smell. It isn't his shoes, as he originally assumes, but the smell of gas, emanating from behind a locked door. Calvero smashes his way in, finding the unconscious Terry (Claire Bloom). Carrying the girl to his attic apartment, Calvero revives Terry, then asks why she is so determined to kill herself. The girl explains that she has always dreamed of becoming a great dancer, but her legs are paralyzed. Calvero vows to raise enough money to help the girl. He goes back on stage, where his old-fashioned act is greeted with a riot of silence. Now it is Terry's turn to encourage Calvero to go on living-and in so doing, she regains the use of her legs. Hired by the Empire theatre corps de ballet, Terry arranges for the management to hire Calvero as a supernumerary. Impresario Postant (Nigel Bruce), not recognizing the famous Calvero in clown makeup, fires him. Only after Terry pleads with Postant to give Calvero another chance does the producer relent, securing a comeback appearance for the ageing comedian and his old partner (Buster Keaton). Calvero's antics bring down the house, just like the old days, but the effort is too much for the old fellow, and he collapses backstage. As Calvero dies, he proudly watches his protegee Terry carry on the "show must go on tradition" by dancing for the crowd. Thanks to the political climate of the time, Limelight was denied a wide distribution; in fact, it didn't play Los Angeles until 1972, twenty years after its completion. At that time, Chaplin's theme music, which had gained popularity on the "hit parade," was honored with an Academy Award. While the film has moments of unmatched hilarity (especially during the fabled Chaplin-Keaton teaming towards the end), the elegiac tone of Limelight was best summed up by critic Andrew Sarris: "To imagine one's own death, one must imagine the death of the world, that world which has always dangled so helplessly from the tips of Chaplin's eloquent fingers." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
If not his final film, this is certainly Chaplin's swan song as well as a tribute to the British musical-hall tradition from which he had sprung. At the time of its release, the director had not had a success in over a decade and had been vilified as a Communist by McCarthyite zealots whose pressure tactics would soon result in the revocation of his U.S. passport. All of this is reflected in the melancholy countenance of the aged performer Calvero, who has nightmares about playing to empty theaters and is only sporadically in command of his former comic genius. In a story reminiscent of the high-minded sentimentality of the silent era, the comedian forgets his woes by ministering to a young ballet dancer suffering from hysterical paralysis. An artist of physical rather than verbal gifts, Chaplin displays his vaunted graceful mimicry, but the script is wooden, ponderous, and studded with cringe-worthy dialogue, despite occasional flashes of wit and insight. A departure from the director's previous work in its somberness, it often evokes the sentimentality of DeSica without his accompanying realism. Yet the performance of the radiant young Claire Bloom is a wonder; that she could revive the comedian's spirits is beyond question. And in the pantomime of the music hall numbers, and especially the final musical-duo routine with former rival Buster Keaton, Chaplin shows why so many have regarded him as the medium's greatest performer. If the film as a whole may rank below the level of his best work, its moments of honest pathos and comic epiphany make it a moving farewell. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Norman Lloyd - Stage Manager; Wheeler Dryden - Clown; Marjorie Bennett - Clown; Geraldine Chaplin - Little girl in opening scene (uncredited); Josephine Chaplin - Child in opening scene (uncredited); Michael Chaplin - Child (uncredited); Victoria Chaplin - Child in opening scene (uncredited); Maurice Marks - Stage Hand; Harry "Snub" Pollard - Street Musician; Julian Ludwig - Street musician
Limelight is probably a unique film[citation needed] in at least one interesting respect. Its two leads, Chaplin and Bloom, were in the industry in no less than three different centuries. In the 19th Century, Chaplin made his theatrical debut at the age of eight, in 1897, in the musical The Eight Lancaster Lads. In the 21st Century, Bloom is still enjoying a full and productive career, having appeared in dozens of films and television series by the end of 2008.
The movie is set in London in 1914, on the eve of World War I. 1914 was the year Chaplin made his first movie. Calvero (Charles Chaplin), once a famous stage clown but now a washed-up drunk, saves a young dancer, Thereza Ambrose, alias Terry (Claire Bloom), from suicide. Nursing her back to health, Calvero helps Terry regain her self-esteem and resume her dancing career. In doing so he regains his own self-confidence, but his attempts to make a comeback are less successful. Terry says she wants to marry Calvero despite their age difference, although she has befriended Neville, a young composer whom Calvero believes would be better suited to her. In order to give them a chance Calvero leaves home and becomes a street entertainer. Terry, now starring in her own show, eventually finds Calvero and persuades him to return to the stage for a benefit concert. Reunited with an old partner (Keaton), Calvero gives a triumphant comeback performance but immediately suffers a heart attack and dies in the wings while just a few feet away Terry, the second act on the bill, dances on stage.
Although the film is set in London it was entirely filmed in Hollywood, mostly at the Chaplin Studios. The street where Calvero lives was a redressed set at Paramount Studios, the music hall scenes were filmed at RKO, and some exterior scenes use back-projected footage of London. Chaplin prominently featured members of his family in the film, including five of his children and his half-brother Wheeler Dryden. Chaplin chose stage actress Claire Bloom for the role of Terry, her first major role in films. Chaplin told his older sons he expected Limelight to be his last film. By all accounts he was very happy and energized during production, a fact often attributed to the joy of recreating his early career in the Music Hall. Most people who have studied the life of Chaplin would assume that his character in the film was based on his father Charles Chaplin Sr who had also lost his audience and had turned to alcohol which led to his death in 1901. In both his 1964 autobiography, and his 1974 book My Life in Pictures, however, Chaplin insists that Calvero is based on the life of stage actor Frank Tierney. Then, in contrast, Limelight was made during a time where Chaplin himself was starting to lose his audience. In many ways, the movie remains highly autobiographical.
The pairing of Chaplin and Buster Keaton in the final musical number is historic for being the only time the two appeared on film together. Chaplin at first had not written the part for Keaton because he believed that the role was too small. It was not until he learned that Keaton was going through hard times (before Limelight, Keaton had gone through a disastrous marriage, lost most of his fortune in the divorce in the process, and had appeared infrequently in films over the previous years) that Chaplin insisted that Keaton should be cast in the film. A rumor has persisted, fueled by the intense rivalry among fans of the two comics, that Keaton gave such a superior performance that Chaplin jealously cut his scenes so he would not be upstaged by his rival. A close associate of Chaplin claimed that Chaplin not only did not feel threatened by Keaton's performance, but also heavily edited his own footage of the duet while enhancing Keaton's. According to Keaton's biographer Rudi Blesh, Chaplin eased his notoriously rigid directorial style to give Keaton free rein to invent his own comic business during this sequence. Keaton's widow Eleanor claimed that Buster was thrilled with his appearance in the film, and believed his business partner Raymond Rohauer started and fed the rumors. Chaplin's son Sydney, who also appeared in the film, said that even if some of Keaton's best scenes were cut (which he did not believe), it was because the storyline did not logically allow a supporting actor to suddenly appear and upstage the climactic comeback of Chaplin's character.
Reception
While touring Britain to promote the film Chaplin learned that he had been refused a re-entry visa to the United States because of his alleged communist sympathies. To add insult to injury, many American theaters refused to play Limelight. Outside of cinemas in several East Coast cities, the film was not seen by the American moviegoing public. This was ironic, given that it is the most apolitical of Chaplin's films from this period. This was in part due to the lingering controversy over Chaplin's previous film Monsieur Verdoux (1947), which was a black comedy critical of capitalism. It was not until 1972 that the film was finally seen in wide American release, and Chaplin, Larry Russell (apparently miscredited - Jazz Wax journalist Marc Myers claims Russell Garcia should have been awarded the 1972 Oscar),[1] and Ray Rasch were awarded an Oscar for Best Original Dramatic Score. The Academy subsequently changed the rules to prevent films more than two years old from receiving awards.
Limelight earns recognition and admiration for its philosophical thoughts about life, sentimentalism and mixture of tragedy and comedy. However, it remains one of Chaplin's less well-known films. Limelight is strongly autobiographical and provides some important insights into his personality and career. His own film career began in 1914, and in the story of an aging entertainer looking back over his glorious career Chaplin seems to be facing the fear that he himself may be all washed up. It is certainly significant that in the fading stage posters on Calvero's wall he is described as a "tramp comic", and indeed in some of his stage performances in the film he wears a ragged outfit that is clearly a variation on Chaplin's Little Tramp costume. The film was made at a time when Chaplin himself was losing—or had all but lost—his audience, a clear parallel to Calvero's experience in the film. Terry's story - orphaned at an early age, her sister forced into prostitution - also has clear similarities to that of Chaplin's mother. The story of an older man and a younger woman falling in love and inspiring each others' lives closely mirrored Chaplin's marriage to Oona O'Neill, and other relationships in his life.
