Christopher Reid Chaplin plays Calvero, a retired clown. Well, a clown who is no longer desired by the public. He saves a young ballerina from suicide and nurses her back to health. Shouldn't this old, obsolete entertainer be bitter and selfish? For whatever reason, he is kind and caring even though the world has thrown him away. Perhaps he is inspired by her beauty or innocence or moved by her hopelessness. He encourages her at every step. He listens to her detailed life story, asking "then what happened" a number of times. He is full of passionate, beautiful sayings about life. That desire is more important than meaning for example.The tone of Limelight is quite sad and contemplative. I felt very comfortable with it. We seem to often suppress sadness rather than try to understand it. But there are also funny moments and the movie never feels too dark or desperate. The music is very nice and I started to get used to it by the end. I think the script is also really good with so many interesting, meaningful lines.Calvero is so isolated and so selfless. I was moved to tears more than once. Chaplin is such a great entertainer, able to effortlessly make you laugh. So to see him performing in his mind to empty audiences, or having people casually walk out of a real performance is hard to take. You don't expect to see one of your heroes lose hope and cry because he is no longer wanted or can't be funny anymore. It makes me feel better to realise that even film legends might feel worthless from time to time and furthermore have the guts to share that fact.Claire Bloom has such lovely eyes. She seems so innocent and yet her character has already has lost the lust for life. Later, she falls in love with Calvero but maybe partially because she subconsciously feels she owes him or should pay him back. She depends on him as her inspiration. But he wants her to go out and flourish and marry the nice young composer she met. It's similar to Monsieur Verdoux where there was also a young woman that liked Chaplin but who he tried to avoid so he wouldn't drag her down.It was incredible seeing Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin in a film together. Buster only appears in the last 15 minutes or so but it's very enjoyable. He is as understated as ever, barely raising an eyebrow to the things that happen. And yet, you can tell he is constantly thinking, feeling, reacting. It's just very subtle.Few films have affected me the way Limelight did. The themes resonated with me very strongly. We're free to laugh or cry wherever we like, depending on how we look at what's happening. It's quite amazing that a silent film comedian went on to make such a great dramatic movie later on. There are numerous references to his old tramp character but the articulate, impassioned and kind older man is new.

Anssi Vartiainen Charlie Chaplin is one of those figures that are so legendary in cinema nowadays that you're pretty much expected to know them. And also to love them. So is it wrong for me to say that I found this movie to be meandering and overly simplistic and long?I can still safely say that I liked it and I don't regret seeing it, but a lot of its running time is spent simply looking at Chaplin's clown routines on stage. Some of them are funny, most got me to smile, but none of them made me laugh. And I guess that's the problem. Humour is often heavily subjective and tied to culture, and thus to time. Some jokes and gags remain timeless, most do not.But luckily for me this is more than a comedy, though it is about comedy. It tells the story of one Calvero (Chaplin), a famous clown back in his glory days, who has now been reduced to a miserable drunk, reminiscing the days when a mere twitch of his eyebrow caused people to fall off their chairs. Enter Terry (Claire Bloom), a young dancer-to-be, who eventually, through miscellaneous happenstances, becomes something of a protégé for Calvero. It's a sweet little story, though it offers no surprises for a savvy viewer. Though that's not really the point. Its purpose is more reflective. Chaplin's own career was largely over at this point and it'd be hard not to draw comparisons, though the man himself claims it's not about him.In the end I'm in something of a bind. I like the reflective mood of the film, I like its thematics and I do like Bloom and Chaplin's chemistry together. But the overly long clown routines, the meandering dialogue scenes and the haphazard pacing mean that I can't call this a great movie. Still worth a watch though if you're into Chaplin.

Sayantan Dutta Before seeing Limelight, I thought Chaplin's three masterpieces are 'The Gold Rush', 'City Lights', and 'Modern Times'. "The Great Dictator" makes me crying, in the last scene as well as 'The Kid'. Today, when I see Limelight, I was disturbed, I was ill-treated, I was very much disturbed. But after the film, I couldn't help but saying a word - The Greatest artist of all time. As a director, he is a master of misen-en-scene, in the beautiful scenes, interiors of Gold Rush, Modern Times - but Limelight, I can't think he couldn't make a film like this. As a director of Modern age, it is as tough to make a film like silent ages, and as a king of silent age, it was also very tough to make a film like Limelight. He was a king in music, and so was his theme. And one can feel what a true artist should be. Remember the very last scene, The king was dying, and then camera was slightly tracking back, then the close shot of his beloved...she was still dancing, seeing her king of heart dying...yet, as a artist her 1st preference was her art..Brilliant..not a clown..but the greatest Artist..Yes remembering all field..THE GREATEST ARTIST OF ALL TIME.

tieman64 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