...and absolutely horrendous behavior, but it's done absolutely beautifully.
A friend has told him of a poison that leaves no trace.
He decides to try it on someone...
...with whom he has no connection the police might discover.
It is one of the moral turning points in a film that took him four years to write.
And now for the experiment.
Even when he says, " Now for the experiment," with the poison...
...when it dissolved to the young woman in the street, I was shocked.
He had the ability to shock you, slap your face, then pull you back.
You went with it because you didn't want to see him kill her...
...and you knew he wouldn't do it...
...but I was shocked by him thinking that way, "An experiment."
The first person you see is beautiful. My goodness, he's going to kill her.
- Quite a shower. - Yes, it is.
- Can I escort you anywhere? - Oh, thank you.
It's beautiful, but it's also a very ugly film in a way. It's very disturbing.
It's almost as if he was pushing the audience, particularly after World War II.
The worst war in recorded history.
"If I play a character like this, how far could I push you and you still love me?
Will you still accept me? Am I even relevant in a world like this right now?"
The criminal is eventually caught. He will accept his fate.
But not before he broadens the indictment against him...
...to include most of humanity.
Humanity was profoundly uninterested.
Have you anything to say before sentence is passed upon you?
Oui, monsieur, I have.
However remiss the prosecutor has been in complimenting me...
...he at least admits that I have brains.
Thank you, monsieur, I have.
And for 35 years, I used them honestly.
After that, nobody wanted them.
So I was forced to go into business for myself.
As for being a mass killer, does not the world encourage it?
Is it not building weapons of destruction for the sole purpose of mass killing?
Has it not blown unsuspecting women and little children to pieces...
...and done it very scientifically?
As a mass killer, I'm an amateur by comparison.
It was a very interesting...
...disturbing touch as he walks out.
It's like, if you watch him walk, his stomach is a little extended...
...the walk is awkward, like a grotesque of the Little Tramp's walk.
It really is. They lead him to the guillotine.
It's the end of the Little Tramp, the real end.
I can only imagine what it must have received when it came out.
No one liked it.
You know, as a man gets on in years, he wants to live deeply.
A feeling of sad dignity comes upon him, and that's fatal for a comic.
Sad dignity.
It was a feeling that Chaplin knew all too well in the late '40s.
He would turn 60 in 1949.
His old genius for inventing gags...
...and developing them in sustained sequences had largely deserted him.
His audience was older too and standing on its dignity.
They were lost to him, as he had always feared they might be.
Calvero, his character in Limelight, directly...
...wearily projected his most despairing vision of himself.
What a sad business, being funny.
Very sad if they won't laugh.
But it's a thrill when they do. To look out there, see them all laughing.
To hear that roar go up, waves of laughter coming at you.
But let's talk of something more cheerful.
Besides, I want to forget the public.
Never. You love them too much.
I'm not sure. Maybe I love them, but I don't admire them.
I think you do.
As individuals, yes, there's greatness in everyone.
But as a crowd, they're like a monster without a head...
...that never knows which way it's going to turn.
It can be prodded in any direction.
Chaplin 's has-been character, depressed and drunken...
...meets the dancer Thereza when he rescues her from suicide.
She is in despair because she cannot walk.
Old man and young woman will conspire to inspire one another.
It still to me is amazing that at 20...
...I worked with the greatest genius in movies and had been chosen by him.
It was certainly he that found me.
I was a young actress. I was 19. I was in a play in London.
And then I got a wire from Harry Crocker saying...
...would I send photographs to Chaplin?
And it seemed so unbelievable to me...
...and I was so frightened by it, I did nothing.
And then about two weeks later, I got a telegram saying:
"Where are the photographs? Charles Chaplin."
So I sent them off as quickly as I could, and, of course, from that moment on...
...I wanted to be in Limelight more than anything.
Every day was a miracle.
I woke up every morning, could not believe...
...that I was going to go and do this part.
On the other hand, I had no film technique whatsoever.
I didn't know anything. So he eased me very gradually into it...
...by starting the scenes where I was comatose on the bed.
I got very quickly used to being filmed and being in a film.
I liked the intimacy of it compared with the theater. I still do.
His way of directing, from the beginning, was to demonstrate...
...and he would demonstrate everything.
My hand here, there, look up, say the line, how to say the line.
It was fine with me because I worshipped him...
...and I would have done anything that he wanted.
And also, when he played the young girl...
...he was more young and girlish and feminine and charming...
...than I could ever have been.
Sometimes he got very angry. It's his prerogative.
Once, very much, but I think it was deliberate.
I had this very difficult scene.
I now look at it and marvel that I could do it at that age.
I'm walking, Calvero. I'm walking.
I was terrified of it, as anybody would have been.
So he called me into his dressing room and he said:
"Claire, we'll just go over the words. I don't want any acting.
Let's go over the words."
So I kind of went over the words with him, the scene, and he said:
"What is that supposed to be?" I said, "That's what you asked me to do."
"No, I didn't ask you to do that. I want you to do the scene! I can't..."
Whatever it was. Of course, I started to cry...
...which is what he was waiting for. So we went out on the floor.
Everybody was ready.
They'd obviously been clued in to what was going to happen to this poor child.
And we did the scene. It was wonderful.
Now is the time to show them what you're made of.
Now is the time to fight!
Remember what you told me standing there by that window?
Remember what you said about the power of the universe...
...moving the Earth, growing the trees, and that power being within you?
Well, now is the time to use that power and to fight!
Calvero, look, I'm walking.
I'm walking!
Calvero!
He'd worked me up into that emotional pitch.
He knew what he was doing when he was angry.
I think he, at that point, was an older man...
...and had many things he wanted to say in the film about love and about death...
...and about his background in London...
...about the music hall, about something he knew well:
A young girl falling in love with an older man.
Chaplin, Oona and their growing family sailed for London...
...and Limelight's world premiere in September, 1952.
I went before he did to set up some publicity things and everything.
He was going to come later.
Then he got from the State Department the right for a re-entry permit...
...because his whole life he was English.
But the day he and Oona got on the boat, they said:
"We're not going to honor it." Well, of course, he got to London furious.
He sent Oona back to America, and he said, " Sell everything.
Sell the house, sell the studio, everything.
We're not going back there."
We have an idea of touring beautiful England...
...and going to all the historical spots.
Naturally, we'll go to Stratford-on-Avon and elsewhere...
...up to Scotland and Edinburgh and all that.
This is the first time that my wife has ever been abroad.
And so naturally, we're going to try and cram in as much as we can.
Grand. One other thing. Would you comment, sir...
...on this proposed ban on your re-entry into the United States?
I've already... I can only reiterate what I said before.
I suppose... I presume that that's already been published.
- Thank you very much. - Thank you.
As the late Calvin Coolidge said when he terminated his presidency...
...embarking to go home, waylaid by one of the pressmen who said:
"Mr. President, won't you say a few farewell words...
...to the American people?"
He said, "Yes, goodbye."
Eventually, Charlie and Oona would have eight kids.
The last four of them born in exile.
Probably didn't work as hard as he did in America...
...but I don't think he could be idle.
He definitely slowed down, and he'd go traveling.
He took us on trips to Africa, to the East.
The Chaplins settled in the Manoir de Ban in Switzerland, in 1953.
He would live out his life here, 24 more years.
He was never idle. He wrote scripts...
...rescored older films, wrote his autobiography.
And thumbing his nose at America, fellow-traveled with the Communists.
He even accepted a peace prize from the Soviet Union...
...then distributed the cash that came with it to the poor.
He created his own demise with America, I think, over time...
...and was quoted as saying in a very embittered way:
"The only thing I miss about America is Almond Joy bars."
Almond Joy and Mounds candy.
Uncle Sydney, he was great. He was our funny uncle.
He was very, very eccentric, or we thought he was very eccentric.
He was married to Gypsy...
...and they lived in a caravan because Uncle Sydney never wanted a house...
...because he thought if he got in a house, he would die there.
And that depressed him. He would get very depressed about a lot of things.
And he was extremely nostalgic for the past.
And he would watch the sunset and cry.
And he would look at little babies and say "Oh, if only I were that age."
He was really terrible.
And he and my father had a fantastic relationship...
...extraordinary relationship. The ideal relationship between brothers.
He twice interrupted his exile to make films.
A King in New York in 1957...
...and A Countess from Hong Kong in 1966.
His son Sydney worked with Sophia Loren.
Chaplin 's daughters also appeared in it.
But like A King, it was a critical and popular failure...
...which deeply depressed Chaplin.
He loved public and his kids were a great public for him.
And if we went to a restaurant, he had an even bigger public.
So in Switzerland we used to go to a restaurant, and he would always order...
...truite au bleu. It's a trout, and it's boiled live...
...so it sort of looks at you. And we would be horrified.
And he'd pick up the plate and he'd take this trout and he'd say:
"Emma, Emma, darling." And he'd kiss the trout on the lips, and we'd go:
"Oh, Daddy, how horrible!"
And by then, the whole restaurant would be looking.
So he was an entertaining father.
His audiences now were mainly accidental.
His most faithful camera was Oona 's.
But the old man would take what he could get...
...and do the old bits from his glory days.
It was as though he was surprised at his own work and would say:
"But he's good." He would talk about him as "him."
"Oh, that's very good. Oh, but that's, that's very good. Oh, he's funny."
I never met Chaplin. And only time I saw him in person was in Cannes.
When he was towards the end of his life, he was honored with a special award.
I was there. The theater was packed! Packed to the roof!
Electricity was enormous...
...because nobody saw Chaplin in person for years.
And the award is given to him...
...by French Minister of Culture, Monsieur Duhamel, who, at this time...
...was also a very sick man who was walking with a cane.
So then suddenly the light goes out...
...spotlight on the curtain, curtain opens...
...and then they are standing there.
Theater explodes! Bravo, standing ovation, bravos...
...one minute, two minutes, five minutes!
Chaplin was visibly so moved by this reaction...
...that he felt that he has to reward the audience somehow.
So he's looking around and suddenly he sees Monsieur Duhamel...
...next to him with a cane.
So he grabs his cane and does few steps.
But in that moment, Monsieur Duhamel, being stripped of the cane...
...starts to St. Vitus Dance because he couldn't...
Now, Chaplin sees it, and he just... They just...
...clasp each other like that, embrace, just to keep standing.
People in the audience who knew about Monsieur Duhamel's condition...
...were petrified. But most of the audience didn't know...
...and they thought that this is a comic number to entertain them.
And they started to applaud and laugh!
It was so surreal. It was like Chaplin's films.
As the years wore on, more and more honors were heaped on him.
The world was bent on reconciliation.
Even the United States wanted to forgive and forget...
...and remember.
That process was completed...
...when he received an honorary Academy Award in 1972.
He did come for the Academy Award, but that was only for financial reasons.
Because he's rereleased his pictures, and he came back and said:
"Oh, that's very kind of everybody." Two days at the Beverly Hills Hotel...
...he says, "When are we going home?"
I can only say...
...thank you for the honor of inviting me here...
...and, oh, you're wonderful, sweet people. Thank you.
Chaplin had five more years to live in declining physical and mental health.
But one has to believe death held few terrors for him...
...because he'd long since imagined his triumph over it.
His artistic immortality as well as the hard, simple fact of his passing.
Both occurred in the same Limelight sequence...
...which he shared with his great rival Buster Keaton.
I think he must have known he was the greatest.
But I think he had a problem wondering if everyone else still thought so.
I remember once, he was then very old, and I came with a boyfriend of mine...
...very interested in cinema. Not so interested in Chaplin.
He preferred Buster Keaton, which was not the thing to do.
We arrived, and he spoke with my father a bit about the silent films.
And then he went on to talk about Buster Keaton, and my father just...
He got smaller and smaller and he shrunk, and he was so hurt.
It was like someone had stabbed him. And he just became very, very quiet.
He didn't say a word during dinner.
And after dinner, he was thinking and he was looking into the fire...
...and suddenly he peeped in a little voice.
He looked at my friend in the eyes and he said:
"But I was an artist." And no one knew what he was talking about.
And then he said, "You know, I gave him work."
It's so moving, with Buster Keaton and him together. He's in the foreground.
Your eye's on him. But he has Keaton perfectly placed.
He doesn't diminish him at all. And it goes on and on...
The two of them are going. It's like jazz musicians taking off.
It was beautiful.
It was two men who had the greatest respect for one another.
I personally was moved because I knew that Buster had seen some hard times...
...and here was Charlie, a multimillionaire...
...still with his own studio and all that. And there was Buster...
...had had all that and lost it.
David Thomson once called Chaplin;
"The looming, mad politician of the century, the demon tramp."
A harsh judgment.
Yet there was something demonic in him, quite visibly so in this sequence.
He was still driven by his relentless ego...
...by his helpless need to dominate his audience...
...now indifferent, even hostile.
If you're not curious anymore, you're not anxious to know how to grow...
...as a filmmaker or a writer, artist, or whatever, that's death.
He, I think, felt that, and I think you have the results in Limelight.
There's something brave, sublime and without precedent in movie history...
...about a man contemplating his own death on-screen.
He makes a peace with it too. He accepts the passage.
Doesn't like it, but accepts the transition of being old and dying...
...but also of him no longer having the energy of youth.
When that sheet is put over his face, with that beautiful music at the end...
...that is the final image of Chaplin's there.
I was fortunate enough to be in that scene, silent.
And Buster was there. And we're pulling back...
...and Buster is muttering to Charlie, not moving his lips:
"Good, Charlie. Stay just where you are. You're right in the center.
Hold it. Don't move. Yeah, yeah, that's it. We've made it. Yeah."
And I thought:
"Boy, you, Norman, have been present at a moment in history."
And it was just...
It made you embrace your whole profession, so to speak.
You say, " This is what real greatness in this profession is."
The last years of his life, he very much withdrew into himself.
It was very hard for my mother.
She had a very hard time, really, looking after a man who'd been so vital...
...and such a strong presence, suddenly, really, vanishing away.
But he seemed to be very much at peace with himself.
He kind of slowly drifted, drifted away...
...and his death was just at the end of a very slow drifting away.
His was the face of his century.
His was the life of his century.
Through his will and energy, and yes, genius...
...he encompassed, as much as one man can...
...the joy and the anguish of his times...
...their romance, their horrors...
...and, of course, what laughter we could find in them.
He was a flawed man, a haunted man, a tormented man.
Which is to say, he was only human...
...but with this uncanny ability to reflect and refract...
...our humanity back at us.