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| Buster Keaton (left) makes a brief appearance as Calvero's partner on the stage. |
As Charlie Chaplin’s popularity began to fade his work
output slowed considerably. He took longer and longer to complete scripts. His
script for Limelight took him about
four years to finish. In it he explores the effects of an irrelevant career on
an aging Vaudeville performer. Chaplin plays Calvero, a once great Music Hall
entertainer who now finds himself receding into obscurity as the world moves on
around him. The film takes place in 1914, presumably on the eve of the First
World War, but the amount of time that seems to pass in the narrative suggests
that the war should have begun during its course. Yet there is no mention of
war at all. This is a mistake, I think, because the presence of the war could
have added a very real dimension to the Calvero’s downfall. As the world
teetered on the brink, who had time for music halls and stage entertainment?
Chaplin’s own fall from grace similarly coincided with the start of WWII.
