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DVD Limelight (2 Disc Special Edition)
Certainly, Charlie Chaplin at this point in his career (1952) had earned the right to reflect on his years as an entertainer, and could make his film as overlong and soppy and sentimental as he darn well pleased. But that doesn't mean the rest of us have to abet this kind of melodramatic indulgence. Chaplin stars as Calvero, a fading clown who helps a paralyzed dancer regain the use of her legs and achieve great fame, but of course at grave cost to Calvero. The film is famous for featuring the only onscreen teaming of Chaplin with the other legendary comic of the silent era, Buster Keaton, and is equally infamous for Chaplin having allegedly cut out most of Keaton's best bits in their sequence together. How much Chaplin sabotaged his own movie to keep Keaton from shining has been much debated, but consider: In Keaton's autobiography, he calls Chaplin the greatest screen comic of all time. In Chaplin's autobiography, he never mentions Keaton. --David Kronke
A truly wonderful film; it swiftly became one of my favorites. In a nutshell, it's the story of a once-great stage comedian (Calvero, a formerly great tramp clown, played by Charlie Chaplin), who's been failing in his career, and has become an alcholic, who saves the life of a despondent ballerina (played by Claire Bloom) from a suicide attempt. The film is a juxtaposition of these two personalities, one who rallies & goes onward, the other who falls further. It contains some of Chaplin's funniest & finest moments, include a nice pantomime of a flea circus, and a duet towards the end of the film with Buster Keaton. Interestingly, neither comic legend played their most famous characters; Chaplin wasn't the tramp, but rather another tramp comedian, a manic violinist. Keaton wasn't his well-known stone face, but rather a near-sighted pianist. Some have suggested that Chaplin jealously cut Keaton's time on screen, but as Jerry Epstein (Chaplin's assistant on this film, and the other person besides Chaplin in the editing room) noted, Chaplin cut far more of his own moments from the scene. When asked why, Chaplin replied to the effect, that no matter how funny something was, if it didn't move the scene forward, it had to go. Something that modern clowns (and film makers) would do well to take to heart. A bittersweet film, that runs perhaps slightly longer than it should, but I frankly think it's "just right." I recommend it very highly, either for fellow clowns to learn from, or for fellow human beings to enjoy.
I was. . .
Is how Chaplin's character answers Terry (Claire Bloom) when she incredulously asks " You are the great Calvero? "
This is the story of passing the limelight from old to young. In this case a world weary has-been clown beaten down by life (" I think I'm dying, but then I'm not sure, I've died so many times before ") and a young ballerina whom he rescues from committing suicide (" What's your hurry? "). She gets thrown out of her apartment for the attempt and ends up convalescing in the flat above, where her neighbor, the once great Calvero spends his days in drink.
It's a wonderfully told tale, though it must be admitted it's as sentimental as the Sermon on the Mount and as corny as a Chopin nocturne. Furthermore Chaplin indulges himself with dialogue that matches the ending speech of the barber in The Great Dictator.
I hope you can forgive him these faults and enjoy the movie. This one's a love letter to all artists by the man Lawrence Olivier once called the greatest actor of the twentieth century. Chaplin's last will and testament.
As the Years Passed By....
l saw this movie when it first came out and was totally entranced. l laughed, l cried, l wondered, l was in awe. And l saw it at least 3 more times over the course of the same year (either 1952 or 1953). lt became one of my most favorite films.
And the years went by, and lo! in the mid-'80's it was scheduled to appear uninterrupted on one of the Cable channels and l joyfully told friends not to miss it because of its greatness and l had a small party, a gathering of selected friends to watch the movie with me. l was a veritable Press Agent for the film in my neighborhood.
And the film started...and the friends at my house left around 3/4 of the way through the movie, the others asked me (the next day +) if l was kidding them....in summary, the movie just didn't stand up to today's standards. The sets were cheesy, the acting often overdone, the emoting embarrassing and l and all of my friends were disappointed big-time...yet another "old-time" movie that didn't stand up to the test of time.
But it's Chaplin and should be at least rented and seen. l myself just can't add it to my DVD collection.
Since Adolf Hitler had the audacity to borrow his mustache from the most famous celebrity in the world--Charlie Chaplin--it meant Hitler was fair game for Chaplin's comedy. (Strangely, the two men were born within four days of each other.) The Great Dictator, conceived in the late thirties but not released until 1940, when Hitler's war was raging across Europe, is the film that skewered the tyrant. Chaplin plays both Adenoid Hynkel, the power-mad ruler of Tomania, and a humble Jewish barber suffering under the dictator's rule. Paulette Goddard, Chaplin's wife at the time, plays the barber's beloved; and the rotund comedian Jack Oakie turns in a weirdly accurate burlesque of Mussolini, as a bellowing fellow dictator named Benzino Napaloni, Dictator of Bacteria. Chaplin himself hits... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charles Chaplin - Paulette Goddard Director(s): Charles Chaplin DVD Release Date: Released the 01 July 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This blistering little black comedy was well ahead of its time when released in 1947. Originally, Orson Welles had wanted Chaplin to star in his drama about a French mass murderer named Landru, but Chaplin was hesitant to act for another director, and used the idea himself. He plays a dapper gent named Henri Verdoux (who assumes a number of identities), a civilized monster who marries wealthy women, then murders them (as we meet him, he's gathering roses as an incinerator ominously bellows smoke in the background) and collects their money to support his real family. The Little Tramp is now a distant memory, though this was the first film not to feature Chaplin's beloved creation. Verdoux is largely viciously clever until it gets too heavy-handed, as evidenced when a woman he spares... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charles Chaplin Director(s): Charles Chaplin DVD Release Date: Released the 02 March 2004 Usually ships within 24 hours
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City Lights is a film to pick for the time capsule, a film that best represents the many aspects of director-writer-star Charlie Chaplin at the peak of his powers: Chaplin the actor, the sentimentalist, the knockabout clown, the ballet dancer, the athlete, the lover, the tragedian, the fool. It's all contained in Chaplin's simple story of a tramp who falls in love with a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill). Chaplin elevates the Victorian contrivances of the plot to something glorious with his inventive use of pantomime and his sure grasp of how the Tramp relates to the audience. In 1931, it was a gamble for Chaplin to stick with silence after talking pictures had killed off the art form that had made him famous, but audiences flocked to City Lights anyway. (Chaplin would... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charles Chaplin - Virginia Cherrill Director(s): Charles Chaplin DVD Release Date: Released the 02 March 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Charlie Chaplin is in glorious form in this legendary satire of the mechanized world. As a factory worker driven bonkers by the soulless momentum of work, Chaplin executes a series of slapstick routines around machines, including a memorable encounter with an automatic feeding apparatus. The pantomime is triumphant, but Chaplin also draws a lively relationship between the Tramp and a street gamine. She's played by Paulette Goddard, then Chaplin's wife and probably his best leading lady (here and in The Great Dictator). The film's theme gave the increasingly ambitious writer-director a chance to speak out about social issues, as well as indulging in the bittersweet quality of pathos that critics were already calling "Chaplinesque." In 1936, Chaplin was still holding out against... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charles Chaplin - Paulette Goddard - Henry Bergman Director(s): Charles Chaplin DVD Release Date: Released the 01 July 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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After the box-office failure of his first dramatic film, A Woman of Paris, Charlie Chaplin brooded over his ensuing comedy. "The next film must be an epic!" he recalled in his autobiography. "The greatest!" He found inspiration, paradoxically, in stories of the backbreaking Alaskan gold rush and the cannibalistic Donner Party. These tales of tragedy and endurance provided Chaplin with a rich vein of comic possibilities. The Little Tramp finds himself in the Yukon, along with a swarm of prospectors heading over Chilkoot Pass (an amazing sight restaged by Chaplin in his opening scenes, filmed in the snowy Sierra Nevadas). When the Tramp is trapped in a mountain cabin with two other fortune hunters, Chaplin stages a veritable ballet of starvation, culminating in the cooking of a... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charles Chaplin Director(s): Charles Chaplin DVD Release Date: Released the 01 July 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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