Limelight

Charlie Chaplin's final film made in the U.S. is both a bittersweet sentimental drama and a tribute to the music hall era of entertainment. Chaplin stars as a former vaudeville star now living in a rundown boarding house and scraping by on the occasional booking, Claire Bloom is the delicate young ballet dancer he saves from suicide and nurses back to health. Chaplin cast Buster Keaton for a single scene as his partner in a comic duet, making this the only film in which the two silent comedy greats ever worked together. Nigel Bruce, Norman Lloyd, and Sydney Chaplin (Charlie's brother) costar, silent star Snub Pollard has a bit part, and Chaplin's longtime silent movie costar Edna Purviance made her last screen appearance here in an unbilled role. Limelight is melancholy and perhaps a bit mawkish, but it's also personal and heartfelt. Chaplin was once the biggest movie star in the world, but by 1952 his popularity had waned. Just as Limelight was being released, Chaplin was denied re-entry into the United States for suspected Communist leanings (this was at the height of Red Scare hysteria and the Hollywood blacklist) and the film was pulled. Chaplin's score went on to win an Academy Award in 1973, after Limelight's much belated 1972 theatrical release. Criterion presents a new 4K digital restoration with a host of extras, including a video essay by Chaplin biographer David Robinson, interviews with Bloom and Lloyd, a retrospective documentary, two Chaplin shorts (one uncompleted), and a booklet. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)