Limelight

Limelight wasn't Charles Chaplin's last film, but it might as well have been. It is about a washed-up comedian, a valedictory on show business, love, and life itself. It even has an overwrought death scene. But Chaplin would live on for more than twenty years, and make two more movies, but those two aren't worth watching.

Set in 1914, Chaplin plays Calvero, once the toast of the stage, but now living in a cheap apartment, hocking his violin while he waits for engagements. One day he comes home so drunk he can barely find the keyhole, but smells gas. His neighbor has attempted suicide, but he saves her. He takes her in as she recovers, and he learns she is a ballerina. Together they support each other as they attempt comebacks.

Limelight is an odd film, and doesn't really work. It is either too talky, with Chaplin expounding on the meaning of life, or full of comic routines or dances. Befitting Chaplin, it is also much too sentimental. It should not be dismissed, though, because it does contain some greatness--notably the only time Chaplin and Buster Keaton would share the stage.

But there is an undercurrent of creepiness to it. Just as we might watch Woody Allen's Manhattan in retrospect with a bit of a shudder, so to Limelight. Chaplin had a thing for much younger women, and in this film the relationship between he and the ballerina, played by the achingly beautiful Claire Bloom, has its problems. While Bloom is living with Chaplin they must pretend that they're married in order to satisfy proprieties of the time, but later Bloom will fall in love with him and want to marry him. He tells her he's too old, and pushes her toward an age-appropriate composer (played by Chaplin's son Sydney), but while the relationship stays platonic there seems to be a sense of justification for May-December romances. Chaplin seems to be saying, in essence, age is just a number. It's a bit difficult to watch today.

The film was released in Europe in 1952 but was not released in the United States until 1972, because of Chaplin's alleged communist sympathies (he couldn't get a visa into the country). Because of his lapse in time, Limelight was eligible for the 1972 Oscars, and Chaplin won for Best Music Score, his only competitive Oscar win. This was the same night that the Academy honored him for his life achievement, one of the highlights in the history of Oscar shows.