Limelight

Buster Keaton on piano and Chaplin on violin, the only time they appeared together 

 "Limelight," the 1952 Charlie Chaplin movie, is not what most people think of as a Chaplin movie. It's a drama, for one thing - about a washed-up vaudevillian and the mentally fragile ballerina who falls for him. Obviously a lot of it is autobiographical - not directly, but in feeling. Chaplin was being attacked by McCarthyites, his career had seem some ebbs, he must have been feeling his age. To me it leans toward maudlin a little too much to be great (Chaplin's consistent Achilles heel, actually). 

BUT. The best part is the one scene that Chaplin shares with that other struggling former master of silent movies, Buster Keaton. They both shared vaudeville DNA, growing up in the theater and going on stage as young children. Now here they are portraying vaudevillians in their twilight, bringing an audience to tears of laughter and thunderous applause. But what is most interesting about the scene is that there's absolutely no background noise during it, just the two of them going about their act on stage, no applause or laughter though clearly it would have been happening in the context of the movie plot, and you see the appreciative audience at the end. It's trying to say or show something very specific - perhaps what it felt like for these two former stage actors to make the move to film, and how different it must have felt playing to a camera rather than live humans. 

As a kid I absolutely loved Charlie Chaplin. I still think a lot of his movies are brilliant and was pretty happy that my then-7-year-old could appreciate "The Kid" during our COVID era binge watch of various Depression waifs (Natty Gann ftw). But I have become more of a Buster Keaton fan in my adulthood. Not that you can't like both, but they are quite different. Buster's physicality, his ingeniously engineered stunts and his persona have really stood the test of time.

Plus maybe he was an actual better person (at least he never married a teenager - and the ding-dongs who like to say "it was different then" etc. should look into how well received Chaplin's marriages were at the time). Anyway, I can separate the art from artist, but kind of like when Jerry Seinfeld was dating a high schooler at the height of his fame, the squick factor never leaves entirely. There's a lot made of the age gap in "Limelight," and it feels a bit... too noble or something. Idk. Chaplin had a terrible childhood and was emotionally stunted, he was often unfairly targeted politically, and "The Great Dictator" is still phenomenal. "Limelight" has its moments but also its flaws, in my opinion.