Film Friday: Charles Chaplin's best film, 'Limelight'

Picking a favorite Charles Chaplin movie might be difficult for some, but for me, Limelight is his best. The film's story of entertainers on the rise and fall is universal and still his most personal. It should have been hailed as one of his supreme masterpieces when it was released in 1952, but thanks to the communist scare, one of Chaplin’s least political films was buried by overzealous politics.

Set in 1914 in London on the eve of World War I, Chaplin stars as Calvero, a once-beloved music hall performer who is now a drunk and lives alone. At the very beginning of the film, he bumbles into the frame, only to discover young Thereza (Claire Bloom) trying to commit suicide. Calvero saves her and is instantly puzzled. Why would a young girl, barely 20, want to end something so glorious as life because of a small setback in her ballet dancing career? Calvero takes it upon himself to ensure that her life doesn’t end up like his, so he helps her and gives her the courage to get on stage.

When watching Chaplin’s later films, it’s fascinating to think about just how against the curve he was. Even a quarter of a century after the introduction of sound films, Chaplin still seems more at ease using the visuals tell the story. By 1952, filmmakers had already mastered the use of spoken language in film - we’re talking about a movie that came two years after All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard after all.

But Chaplin was steadfast. Dialogue even in Limelight is here because he couldn’t make a silent film. When Thereza finally figures out that she is not paralyzed and can dance, we don’t tear up because she is yelling “I’m walking!” The scene looks a bit clunky, but it works because Chaplin pulls this stunning emotional reaction from Claire Bloom, amazingly in her first movie here. The camera zooms in and Bloom walks towards it. The audience is as pleased as Calvero/Chaplin is, sitting in that chair watching her. The music swells to a volume that would rival the loudest moments in Gone With The Wind. Yes, this is sentimental, but it’s Chaplin at his finest. He wants you to cry.

That leads to another weird fact about Limelight. It’s just not that funny. Sure, there are a couple of gags here and there, but there’s nothing laugh-out-loud hilarious in this film. So while Chaplin could find humor in authoritarian regimes in The Great Dictator, gold prospectors in The Gold Rush or even a serial killer in Monsieur Verdoux, he finds the job of an entertainer deadly serious. It’s obvious why - he grew up in music halls and his father was a music hall performer who let alcoholism take his life. Making fun of a subject so close to his heart might have been too hard.

Not only is the film missing humor overall, it is also missing a political statement. That’s an important decision for Chaplin, as if he realized that there is no time for politics when dealing with show business. At the time in the film when he would usually lecture the audience (like during the endings of Dictator and Verdoux), Chaplin instead decides to finally give us the joke we’ve been waiting for. We finally get to see the epic meeting of Buster Keaton and Chaplin we’ve been waiting for. Because in this film, showing us what Calvero could do at his best is the most important at that moment. His lesson to the audience might not be about politics, but it’s really that our elders need a final moment in the spotlight before we can let them go. Thereza and the audience have to learn from them before we launch our own careers.

This turned out to be Chaplin’s final film made in Hollywood because while he was on a boat to London for the film’s premiere there, the U.S. government refused to let him back in. Chaplin never intended that to be the case obviously, but perhaps it was for the best that Limelight ended up being his goodbye to Hollywood. (He did make two more films in Europe - the odd A King in New York in 1957 and the often dreadful A Countess From Hong Kong in 1967.) The film acts as the perfect curtain call for an artist who perhaps knew that his time as a powerful figure in his field was ending. What better way to pass the baton to younger peers than to do so with a showstopping ending.

On Home Video: The Criterion Collection released Limelight on Blu-ray in May, with a brand new interview with Claire Bloom and a new video essay by Chaplin historian David Robinson that delves into the film’s production. There’s also a Chaplin short, trailers and an interview with Norman Lloyd, who has a small part in the film.

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