UR | 2h 17min | Drama, Comedy | 1952
In “City Lights” (1931), Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp dotes on a blind flower girl. Circumstances separate them just as he secures money for an operation that restores her sight. Finally, they’re happily reunited as she recognizes her benefactor who, until then, was “invisible” to her.
Two decades later, Chaplin improvises on this theme in his classic “Limelight” (1952). Here, an over-the-hill stage-comic Calvero (Chaplin), “opens the eyes” of a suicidal stage-dancer, Terry (a radiant Claire Bloom), and she rediscovers her rhythm on stage and in life.
Chaplin’s Lifelong Love Affair
At the level of plot and storyline it’s tempting to see Chaplin’s heroine superficially, as an expression of his allegedly narcissistic romanticism: to desire and be desired by pretty young things, on and off screen. But to Chaplin, “she” is an artistic expression of his lifelong love affair with his art and his audience.Chaplin couldn’t help himself. He was so in love with the sounds, smells, sights, and sensations of showbiz that it was always going to mean “life” to him, and nothing less would satisfy.
Chaplin’s film overflows with such pathos that audiences, used to his farcical films, would take years to embrace what’s arguably his most profound testament.
In one scene, Calvero dreams he’s performing his funniest acts before a roaring crowd, only to find that the applause is only in his ears; the seats are bare, the theater quite empty. The camera tears itself from his startled stare on stage to his forlorn face in bed.
In another scene, devastated by an audience walking out, he’s sitting in his dressing room, wiping make-up off, gazing into a mirror in horror at his desolation. As you watch that close-up of Chaplin’s enviably expressive eyes, you share his horror.
Like Calvero, Chaplin’s fame was ebbing and, like Calvero, he fancied an imminent resurrection. He seems in a hurry to say and do everything, at once. Happily for us, every line brims with his wit and insight.
When Terry wonders why he keeps returning to the stage when he’d once told her that he loathed the theater, Calvero agrees that he does hate the theater, but he also hates the sight of blood and can’t help returning to the theater for it’s in his veins.
Chaplin seems to ask: Does an artist’s self-worth come from “within,” from confidence in his or her skill, or from “without,” say, from the way fans and critics receive his performances?
And he seems to answer that art is unique, by its very nature demanding a submission, a vulnerability that few other professions do. For, unlike the doctor or engineer or scientist (whose formula or machine or law either works or doesn’t, everywhere, every time, with almost everyone), the comic approaches his art with trepidation. He must stand expectantly each night before a new audience, to determine if his joke still tickles or falls flat.
Chaplin’s Humanity
“Limelight” tells us that our ability to live full lives hinges on our habits of thinking. The doctor treating Terry tells her that her paralysis is a self-imposed deceit; only she can help herself get back to health and fulfilment on the dance stage.Yet, we’re not always able to help ourselves. We need each other. In fact, helping and being helped shows our humanity. Calvero leaps out of his drunken stupor to save Terry; he wills himself sober so that he can nurture her back to health, and himself back to life. In turn, she prods him from the despair of rejection to the hope of acceptance.
For decades, Chaplin’s character, the Tramp, helped others to rise above the dehumanizing forces of nationalism, fascism, elitism, poverty, war, and destitution.
Now, as Calvero, he helps on a more personal level. When Terry is wallowing in self-pity, Calvero goads her to fight, not against herself, but for happiness because “the fight for happiness is beautiful.”
Passing on the Torch
“Limelight” made Claire Bloom famous in Hollywood, until then a 19-year-old known only in London’s narrow theater circles. In interviews, she has described what a privilege it was to be chosen by him, out of relative obscurity, “I was nobody … to be Chaplin’s leading lady.”True to form, Chaplin sees in Bloom a beauty and grace that others were blind to. And his caring attention transformed her life as an actress. Fittingly, her first memoir was titled “Limelight and After: The Education of an Actress.”
Sensing that it might be his final American film, Chaplin poured every part of himself into “Limelight.” He composed its haunting soundtrack. He cast as many as six of his family.
He conjured a pivotal scene with the legendary Buster Keaton. Like Chaplin himself, Keaton moved reluctantly out of the old era of Hollywood, and not quite excitedly into the new. Their collective anguish literally bleeds off the screen, as the two greats share scenes in that memorable 20-min final act.
