Just what I expected

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

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

After almost half a century in the USA for whom among other things he sold war bonds in two World Wars, Charlie Chaplin got his walking papers from our government. And maybe the unkindest cut of all was that he got them as Limelight was premiering. Chaplin had retired his little tramp character after Modern Times and he conceded that sound was here to stay. But the tramp kind of made a comeback in this film. As for Chaplin this film is about the old age of a performer who knows nothing else and a last touch of romance in his senior years.Making her debut in Limelight is Claire Bloom and she plays a fragile young thing with hopes of being a prima ballerina who tries to take her own life with gas. Charlie who also rents a room in the same boardinghouse saves her and the two begin a relationship of sorts. He's a once famous comedian who has seen his best days as public tastes change and takes solace in alcohol as the fuel to keep him going. But she provides him a reason to live other than to drown his sorrows and Chaplin provides Bloom with hope and tenderness.Charlie who took a great deal of this story from A Star Is Born works some real wonders here. One thing about Chaplin films, they were his personal projects even more than Orson Welles. He wrote, produced, directed, did the music and starred in Limelight and unlike Welles never had to worry about who would release his films, he was a founding partner of United Artists. I was going to make a crack that he didn't do the choreography and then read as the film concluded he did have a hand in it. Was there no limit to this man's talents?Limelight is most famous for Charlie doing a once in a life time duo act with his silent comic rival Buster Keaton. The two do a very funny routine with a violin and piano. Chaplin worked on his projects only, Keaton however was starting to come back if not as a headliner, as a reliable character player in a lot of films that were way beneath what he had been before.The performance pieces were nice, but the real key to Limelight is Chaplin expressing his opinions on love and life and how precious both are. The only time I heard it expressed as well is by Burt Lancaster in Birdman Of Alcatraz. It's all quite profound for a clown.

Throughout most of his early career, Charlie Chaplin reveled in wacky physical humor. As the years went by, his movies started to take on a more serious tone, as he looked at the plight of the working man in a cruel world. By the time that he got to "The Great Dictator", he was openly lampooning tyranny while still showing a lot of funny stuff.But then "Limelight" went to the next step. It contains very little in the way of outright humor. Most of the funny stuff in this movie appears in the scenes where the characters are performing on stage. Mostly the movie is a serious look at how Chaplin's washed-up clown is trying to help a suicidal woman (Claire Bloom) make a career for herself.The obvious tone of the movie is that the old is making way for the new. Indeed, it's the first movie in which the man once known as the Tramp looks truly elderly. But what happened in real life reflected it: the US government wouldn't let Chaplin reenter the country, and most of the country never even saw the movie for twenty years. Things will not be the same for the fictional clown or for the real one.The result is a very good movie. I highly recommend it.

Limelight is a philosophic dramatic tragedy as two entertainers find parallels both in their personal and professional lives. But it is also an intimate piece giving insight into Chaplin's psyche at this stage of his career as Chaplin presents Limelight in the style of an intelligent auteur.Calvero, a washed up clown becomes a figure of strength to young dancer Thereza after she attempts suicide. Through out her recovery Calvero builds up Thereza's mental strength by encouraging her to pursue her dreams as a dancer. This encouragement leads to philosophical teachings regarding the meaning of life, "Life can be wonderful if you're not afraid of it" states Calvero. Although it gives us food for thought in the same manner of Chaplin's previous film Mousier Verdoux, the dialogue continues to return to the subject of life in a philosophical context to the point of exaggeration.Once the over usage of philosophy is put aside Limelight gains pace as Thereza strides in her dancing career whereas Calvero's realisation of his own career hits home and silently becomes intimidated by Thereza's growing success. It could be argued that the audience are placed in Calvero's position in his intimidation of her as segments of Limelight are dedicated to Thereza's rehearsal and performance. But unlike Calvero, Chaplin does not want us to be intimidated by Thereza but mesmerised by her in order to see the beauty of her talent as she moves across the stage on cue. Calvero realises this himself and goes from intimidation to realisation, stepping out of the way of Thereza both personally and professionally in a symbolic gesture as stated in the credits, "The glamour of limelight, from which age must pass as youth enters".Calvero may be a tragic figure but he is a man of wisdom who knows what is best in his situation and how he must follow his beliefs. One can conclude this is how Chaplin felt at this point in his career, vicariously bowing out with the character of Calvero as he had told his sons during production that he expected Limelight to be his swan song. So when we listen to Calvero make such statements as, "That's all any of us are, amateurs. We don't live long enough to be anything else", Chaplin is vicariously announcing his beliefs to the audience going back to the opinion of Limelight being an auteur piece.Even when Limelight contrasts its fill of drama and tragedy by lightening the mood with comedy, more observant viewers could see it as Chaplin subverting comedy to reflect this period of his career. Calvero's recurring dreams of himself at his peak singing in the style of vaudeville about spring and love, being playful in his gestures are call backs to The Little Tramp. Yet they are only dreams, which is an aspect Calvero substituting for Chaplin sadly understands knowing his golden years have passed.In short Limelight is a reflective piece, "Time is the best author. It always writes the perfect ending" Calvero admitted. Time gone by seems to be how Chaplin saw his career in 1952 and initially signed off with the death of Calvero in the midst of Thereza performing signifying the transition of the times at Chaplin saw it.