It's painful to watch your idol die but it's even more hurtful to see him getting old and losing everything you used to love about him and slowly falling lower and lower in your eyes, fading away. But this is not the case with Charles Chaplin because his genius was always on the rise.
"Limelight" tells the story of Calvero, a vaudeville performer and a comedian struggling to find work long after his glory days were over. He has lost hope and drowns himself in alcohol but one day he meets a young girl who has lost hope too. Sometimes destiny brings people into our lives at just the right time to show us how much are our lives worth and lead us to the right path.
Although Charles himself denied all of the similarities with his persona but while watching you just can't help feeling how much Calvero and Chaplin are alike. "Limelight" is a great satire on the world of show business and how fleeing is the fame - no wonder the movie in a way predicted Charles' own fate. It was a financial failure in the United States and soon after the premiere Chaplin left the country; only 20 years later, in 1972, he was awarded with an Oscar for this movie and regained his legendary status he deserved way back then but was not able to obtain because of narrow-mindedness of some people.
"Limelight" was the debut for young actors Claire Bloom and Sydney Chaplin (Charles' second son) and featured Buster Keaton in his only on-screen performance with Chaplin which was one of many highlights of this movie. Charles expresses his wisdom through Calvero who speaks it, assuring us of one beautiful little thing called life: that it is a wonder by its nature and wonders aren't supposed to go down the drain easily. We should fight for it, feel it, live every minute of it, enjoy it, use it any way we want to accomplish anything we want and it's never too late to realize that our lives, even in their most unpleasant moments, are worth living for. As they say, all the world's a stage and we ought to play on it until the end.
"Limelight" tells the story of Calvero, a vaudeville performer and a comedian struggling to find work long after his glory days were over. He has lost hope and drowns himself in alcohol but one day he meets a young girl who has lost hope too. Sometimes destiny brings people into our lives at just the right time to show us how much are our lives worth and lead us to the right path.
Although Charles himself denied all of the similarities with his persona but while watching you just can't help feeling how much Calvero and Chaplin are alike. "Limelight" is a great satire on the world of show business and how fleeing is the fame - no wonder the movie in a way predicted Charles' own fate. It was a financial failure in the United States and soon after the premiere Chaplin left the country; only 20 years later, in 1972, he was awarded with an Oscar for this movie and regained his legendary status he deserved way back then but was not able to obtain because of narrow-mindedness of some people.
"Limelight" was the debut for young actors Claire Bloom and Sydney Chaplin (Charles' second son) and featured Buster Keaton in his only on-screen performance with Chaplin which was one of many highlights of this movie. Charles expresses his wisdom through Calvero who speaks it, assuring us of one beautiful little thing called life: that it is a wonder by its nature and wonders aren't supposed to go down the drain easily. We should fight for it, feel it, live every minute of it, enjoy it, use it any way we want to accomplish anything we want and it's never too late to realize that our lives, even in their most unpleasant moments, are worth living for. As they say, all the world's a stage and we ought to play on it until the end.