About midway through watching Charlie Chaplin‘s Limelight for the first time I got to thinking about what makes a great filmmaker. It seems easy enough to spot a great film, while you’re watching it as you get that “You’ll know it when you see it” vibe, but I started to focus on what exactly it was about the films of great filmmakers that make them stand out from the rest. Films from great filmmakers stand alone, they can’t be duplicated and in this age of remakes and reboots no one would dare attempt try and remake their work.
In terms of Chaplin, could you imagine a remake of Modern Times, The Great Dictator, City Lights or The Gold Rush? Forget the fact they are silent films and the business of it all. Just focus on the artistry and what makes those films great. What makes those films classics?
I’ll answer for you… it’s Chaplin, and they are indisputably unique as a result. You can call them silent films and you can call them comedies and you could even boil it down so far as to call their storyline’s “simple”, but in the end they are films without category. They are films that don’t fit easily into a box. Now, enter Limelight, a simple story, and a film someone could possibly imagine remaking, but as you watch you’re drawn to a certain special something. A tone, a smile, an edit, a punchline, a measure of sweetness met with brutal reality and then there’s Chaplin, the spark of it all setting it apart from anything you would consider calling “just another movie”.
Thereza: I thought you hated the theatre
Calvero: I do. I also hate the sight of blood, but it’s in my veins
The story centers on an aging stage comedian and a young, suicidal ballet dancer who, through a twist of fate, end up in the life of the other, ultimately finding everything they had thought lost. It’s not a silent film, though Chaplin does make good use of his talent for wordless comedy (including an extended cameo appearance by Buster Keaton as his assistant), but for the most part this is a drama between two people, told within the walls of one room. This is nothing new to cinema and, storywise, there isn’t anything particularly unique. Yet, there’s a freshness, an effervescent bubbling beneath the surface that keeps us watching, keeps us intrigued, makes us smile as much as it makes us melancholy as we experience the ups and downs of Chaplin’s Calvero and Claire Bloom as Thereza (though I must admit some aspects of Bloom’s more “stage-like” performance didn’t work for me). And it makes sense, after all, the film is so clearly an example of Chaplin playing himself and his heart is felt in each and every scene.
I’m not suggesting filmmakers haven’t attempted to remake classic films or even adapt classics to the stage, as Limelight has been, but it’s this heart of the filmmaker that is ultimately missing from any such attempt. The keen eye for a cut or the delivery of a punch line that never quite feels the same. A great filmmaker accomplishes such a feat, leaving any attempt at mimicry flailing in the wind.
Through its several stage sequences, whether they be flashbacks of Calvero’s early career or the aging comedian’s final performance opposite Keaton as the two pantomime a scene as the strings of a piano begin snapping and playing their own strained chords, Limelight is as much a joy as it is a sad tale of how age catches up to us all. Bloom’s performance as Thereza goes from despair to becoming the film’s vibrant core, though it isn’t without the hope of Chaplin’s Calvero that she’s able to become that which she was meant to be.
Criterion’s new Blu-ray presentation is wonderful, the video quality is top notch, though it should be mentioned there are examples of where time has left its mark. This may bother some, but for my money it keeps some measure of history intact.
The special features are abundant and go deep into the film’s production and what Chaplin was facing at the time as a result of attacks from the American press and far right as he protested the trials of Communist Party members and ultimately found himself subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
Chaplin would shoot Limelight in Los Angeles but hold the film’s premiere in London, upon his departure from New York to London his re-entry permit was revoked. He wouldn’t return to the U.S. until 1972 to accept an honorary Oscar. This, and more, is covered in the new feature Chaplin’s “Limelight” guided by Chaplin biographer David Robinson. Two new interviews are also included, one with Bloom and the other with co-star Norman Lloyd.
A piece from the 2002 release of Limelight on DVD titled “Chaplin Today: “Limelight”” is also included along with two short films A Night in the Show (1915) and The Professor (1919), a scene that was deleted from the film following its London premiere and a brief audio excerpt of Chaplin reading from “Footlights”, his novella that inspired the film.
Finally, an impressive, 40-page illustrated booklet is included with an essay from Peter von Bagh titled “Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man” and an on-set piece by journalist Henry Gris.
Limelight suffered from a wide-scale boycott in the United States upon release and yet still won an Oscar for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score. Yet, not many in the U.S. would see it until it was re-released in 1972. The mere fact we live in a world where we can experience a movie as great as this with the full breadth of its history at our disposal is a pleasure we shouldn’t take lightly. Chaplin was a great filmmaker and it’s films as simple as Limelight that show it’s more than just storytelling that makes a film great, it’s a matter of who is telling the story that makes it something much, much more.
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