• Limelight

2/4/25 (Tues)

Chaplin wants to be philosophical in this very talky 1952 piece, but less would have been more. I suspect this would work better as a silent film, if only to avoid the platitudes that his character keeps spitting out. The film is hugely popular in Japan thanks to the melodramatic tone and its chaste treatment of the girl’s love.

An aging comedian saves a girl in his apartment building from suicide. He brings her to his apartment and nurses her back to health. Against his objections, the girl, an ex-ballerina, falls in love with him, which he considers a mere act of pity. He tells her that the age gap is impossible and urges her to rekindle her relationship with the poor young composer who had earlier courted her. But she remains devoted to him.

Meanwhile, he is considered old hat in the business and discovers that his name is box office poison; he fantasizes about his old acts only to see an empty theater even in his dreams. He tries performing under an assumed name but fails miserably when the audience walks out, something he hasn’t experienced since his early years (“The cycle’s complete”). This drives him deeper into despair.

At the same time, the girl recovers enough to perform again. Her star quickly rises even as the old man’s name sinks. She persuades management to put him into the show anonymously as a harlequin, but he is fired from that as well when audiences yawn. Finally his old managers decide to honor him with a gala tribute. Despite a severe lack of confidence, he manages to get to the stage and proves triumphant, even winning an encore. In his grand finale, he severely injures himself, unknown to the audience or others. As his heart gives way from the excitement, he begins to fade, but insists on watching the girl from the wings during her big dance number. As she spins before him, he slowly and sadly passes away.

Chaplin says that the character is based on an old comedian, and much has been made of his father’s similar experience. But it’s hard not to see the parallels with Chaplin himself, once probably the most famous actor in the world and then a nearly forgotten figure with a succession of failed films at that point. A British citizen, he was banned from returning to the US to promote the film due to accusations of Communism, and the film did not do particularly well. It was not released officially in the US until 20 years later, by which time the politics had been forgotten and forgiven. Chaplin won his only competitive Oscar for the wonderful score, but I suspect he was remembered mainly as a relic of an ancient time. The film character’s wistful, perhaps bitter memories of better times would certainly have reminded viewers of Chaplin; the character is explicitly referred to in the film as the “tramp comedian” and speaks of “the tramp in me”. There’s also the matter of the old clown’s relationship with the teenaged girl, which also matched Chaplin’s marriage with the teenaged Oona. But probably best not to go there.

The fantasy acts are so bad that I wondered if that was intentional to show how far he’s fallen. They’re old music hall sketches, definitely past their time. The one sequence that really worked was the final act with no less than Buster Keaton in their only joint screen appearance. That part tellingly was essentially silent, playing to their strengths. Both were in great form, with Chaplin and an elastic leg alongside the stone-faced Keaton mangling the piano. Chaplin apparently offered Keaton this minor role after learning that the comedian had fallen on hard times, but whatever the circumstances, it was a high point of the film. It was this scene that finally shows us why Chaplin’s character was considered legendary. Whereas the applause in his solo act seemed strange given that audiences had walked out earlier on, the cheers here were fully justified.

Some great lines throughout (“I thought you hated the theater.” “I also hate the sight of blood, but it’s in my veins.”), but Chaplin is too low on energy to deliver those to their best effect. The dialogue otherwise is largely old fashioned even for its time (“I must, I must!”), and his constant aphorisms sound unnatural. Here’s a sample, when he berates the girl as she complains about her illness:

“The trouble is you won’t fight! You’ve given in, continually dwelling on sickness and death. But – there’s something just as inevitable as death, and that’s life. Life, life, life! Think of the power that’s in the universe, moving the earth, growing the trees. That’s the same power within you if you only have courage and the will to use it!”

Surely that could have been compressed into a single line. It becomes very trying to listen to. Also, I wish there had been a clearer outcome for the girl. Her infatuation with or sympathy for the old man did not negate her love for the composer, but the clown’s death will always leave the composer in second place. It would have been more satisfying if the clown could have opened her eyes and brought the lovebirds together before he died.

There’s immense pleasure in seeing Chaplin himself baring his soul in a world where he is, if not entirely forgotten, considerably diminished. His triumph at the end was bittersweet in this context, since this may reflect his own desire to go out in a blaze of glory, which, other than the belated Oscar he won years later for this film’s score, never really happened. The film itself, as a faint reminder of the great filmmaker he used to be, is more an elegy than he presumably intended. Still, an interesting portrait of the artist as an old man.