Word: calvero
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...awkward nostalgia Limelight elicits stems partly from its semi-autobiographical stance. Chaplin plays Calvero, an old vaudeville comedian who drinks too much and can't find work. He rescues a suicidal young ballerina (Claire Bloom) and infuses her with his life energy and accumulated wisdom. She becomes a great star; she falls in love with him; he dies...
Only occasionally does the film break away from sentimentality. At one point, the old comic gets a booking under an assumed name and tries to make a comeback. During Calvero's act, Chaplin shows us the audience: half are asleep, the rest impatient and mumbling. Yawning spectators start leaving. Soon, everyone has left, but for a single nodding head in the foreground. The rest is chairs. A comeback attempt, if it fails, can be an embarassment even for the audience. Those in the audience Chaplin filmed don't know the performer is the once-great Calvero, so they are spared...
Chaplin tried to write a tragedy, and even included supposed tragic flaws: Calvero's career collapsed when he started drinking. Chaplin wants the drunkenness to be tragic, but he presents it in such a benign manner that it's never even pathetic. Even as a drunk he, like the rest of the cast, speaks in stilted language with a stilted articulation that is too melodramatic even for a melodrama--a far cry from Charlie Chaplin the appealing tramp, whose title frames said things like "I thought you was a chicken." He even tries to make patter jokes in the style...
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