tte UNA Le ie, MY affection for Chaplin goes Witte to my first childhood andi the cinema. I laughed Ne vy at the antics of the help- and ‘ le man in the big shoes Teen d, decrepit jacket. Later Cha if to know and love another j Plin, the thoughtful, penetrat- ee and exposer of social the nose films have been on 49 orld’s screens for more than years now, aaa I went to France as a to ant Of the Soviet delegaticn Cinema Seventh International t0 seq a Festival, I looked forward ielicn Chaplin’s latest picture, then oe But I did not know Pers at I was to meet Chaplin ang wally, to visit him at home Make the acquaintance of his Poy family, d We arrived in Paris on a Satur- cided fete and the next day de inter, 9 see some of the more €sting pictures at local cine- Ramee: There were two out- told i films, our French friends tm the Radio-Cine, big posters i the public of two facts shown: £ Picture that was being in the Acclaimed as the best France World,” and “Banned in The fl for twenty-five years.” Soyig, 7? in question was the hag ‘ Cruiser Potemkin, which for ee Playing to full houses ead five months. of a the street, on the front gee ber cinema, was a huge face SHOwing an old clown, his he the with make-up, watch- altace ler The clown was Chap- =a the picture, Limelight. aa Was a long queue at the houses ice, and presently a “full the e Sign was put-out. It is light pus eVery day, though Lime- Month. S been running for many Th th. ; : Sit a darkened hall we had to legs . Ugh what seemed an end- toon, Ue¢ession of animated car- fore ve advertisement reels be- At tone Chaplin picture came on. Sung Last, the beautiful niusic » and then came the cap- Script, direction and music tion Ma SUTTOM Cea n ncn ee ne RCC ne eon ec UL Charlie Chaplin romuvaicnsaamnaney LYUBOV ORLOV A smenernnsnnnensinnnnnnn ne ets Conmimand Performance movie of he toa" Stars at London’s Empire Theatre. ‘ar, ®t. Program netted more than $200,000 People’s Ar‘ist of the USSR by Charles Chaplin, and with Chaplin:in the title role of Cal- vero, the clown. : Limelight holds a place all its own among the productions of the bourgeois cinema. It is something very special, and bears no re- semblance to any film I have ever seen. : In it, we see Chaplin in 4 new aspect, giving a masterful por- trayal of two Calveros: of the old, broken man who can no longer hope for success, but who is full of the wisdom of life and has retained his faith in life, and of the other Calvero, the happy- go-lucky clown whose antics make the audience laugh. One of his turns is a performance with two: trained fleas, Henry and Phyllis. Phyllis, an obstinate sort of flea, refuses to obey her trainer and always jumps in the wrong direc- tion. She gets into the clown’s rousers, and Charlie has a hard time locating her, but the flea he finally extracts is not Phyllis; it is some strange, stray flea... . There are many of these eccen- tricities in the picture; Chaplin sings, dances and plays the violin, and does all these things with an art and humor that never fail to draw applause. But it is not only these scenes that make Limelight such a forceful and gripping pic- ture. In all of his big pictures, Chap- lin champions the cause of the little man, of the dispossessed and downtrodden by bourgeois society. His Limelight is a throb- bing and convincing story of the bitter lot of the artist in capital- ist society; moreover, it is also a stirring storv of the artist's in- tegrity, comradeship and innate humanity. : The story of Calvero’s love for Theresa, the voung ballerina, 1s told with warmth and penetration. Theresa is excellently played DY Claire Bloom of the London id Tic company. : mate despair by the know- ledge that she has no future on the stage unless she sells Jicr conscience and body, Theresa de- r reign saw Quee ; Among them was Charles Chaplin. A for a benefit fund. Bn oe ee Se es cides to commit suicide. Calvero, a total stranger, saves her. He sacrifices everything he has for her, even his love, for that is a secret he carefully keeps from her. He does everything to re- surrect her faith in life, in the all-eonquering power of art. To her the old clown brings the suc- cess that has eluded him all these vears. He makes her fam- ous and dies on the stage, in har- ness, but only when he is certain that Theresa will be happy. His portrayal of the molding of the character of the young artist is given in broad generalization, and it is not only Theresa’s outlook that Chaplin helps to shape: Limelight imparts to its audi- ences faith in life and life’s lofty ideals. I would like to mention a dis- tinctive feature of Limelight which makes that picture stand out in sharp contrast to the pro- ductions of the Western cinema. In all of them, the attitude to women is usually -based on the erotic, not on humaneness and comradeship. I cannot recall a single Western film in which wo- men are treated as equals. In his earlier works, too, Chap- lin gave us poetic images of wo- men, always emphasizing the re- spect of man for woman. In Limelight this captivating trait of Chaplin’s art is brought out even more vividly.. Respect for woman, readiness to sacrifice one’s love for her happiness, is a theme one very seldom meets in the capitalist cinema. And one more thing about Limelight: laughter alternates with tears. I think we can agree with Diderot that the actor ach- ieves his most powerful effect when his audience smiles and cries at one and the same time. It takes a specia! talent, one com- pounded of wisdom and simplici- ty, and understandable to all, ene that moves and. convinces audiences, to achieve that. Such is the talent of Charles Chaplin, brilliant screen playwright, direc- tor, composer and actor. Chaplin, it will be recalled, n Elizabeth greet a galaxy of stage t left is. Princess Famous clothes worn by Charlie Chaplin in 1921 filming of ‘The Kid have been. saved by cameraman Rolle Totheroh, who filmed many of the early Chaplin movies. Totheroh is taking the clothes te Europe for Chaplin, who is working on a new film. was forced to leave the United States where he had worked for over 40 years. His pictures and his views of life were not to the liking of the present regime. He has always opposed war, always championed friendship among nations, and his art is imbued with love and respect for the common people. Chaplin lives in Europe now, near Lausanne in Switzerland. The members of his family have given up their American citizen- ship; Chaplin himself, born in Britain, had never been an Am- erican citizen. On a bright morning I set out for Lausanne with G. V. Alexan- drov, the cinema director and an old acquaintance of Chaplin’s. The train from Berne took us through mountain valleys with blossoming orchards, past old ’ castles, over the slopes of moun- tains where snow-capped peaks glittered in the sun. Somehow all this brought to mind the iron- ical scene in Chaplin’s Modern Times, where trees extend their fruit-laden branches into house windows and the cows yield beer instead of milk. After negotiating the last mountain pass, our train descend- ed into the valley and before us was the majestic panorama of Lake Geneva lying placidly amidst the mountains. Vineyards stretched down to the slopes to the water’s edge, forming a patch- work quilt patterri—small plots separated. by crooked winding stone hedges. : At Lausanne station we found Chaplin’s car, a much-used: Ford, awaiting for us. The Swish chauf- feur spotted us at once, and we were soon driving along the es- planade, leaving the city behind, climbing mountains, diving under bridges and speeding through lanes cut in the vineyards. When the car ascended a hill PACIFIC TRIBUNE — AUGUST 6, 1954 —-PAGE 9 ‘by the boom of cannon. just beyond Vevey, a little resort town about 30 kilometres from Geneva, the driver pointed to a large patch of greenery standing out against the snow-covered peaks. That was the park of the Chaplin villa. The gates were wide oven, and so were the doors of the house itself. We walked through it on- to a broad lawn surrounded by tall, stately trees and clusters of magnolias. The lawn merged with the -hillside and descended to the lake. In the distance, where a tennis court was being laid out, we saw our hosts. They noticed us too, and a grey-haired man in a black coat came towards us waving his hat in greeting. It was Chaplin. I was terribly excited. What would I say? How would the introduction come off? — But there was no need for an introduction; Chaplin greeted me simply, like an old friend. “And from his very first words one be- comes aware of his magnetic per- sonality, of the simplicity of this great artist and man. “How nice it is here, how quiet and peaceful,” I remarked. No sooner were these words uttered than something wholly unexpected happened: from the near-by hills came the staccato tattoo of machine guns, followed The Swiss army was holding training exercises. Chaplin’s 50-year-old gardener had been given 12 days’ leave to take part in the manoeuvres and there was no one to transplant the flowers. The flower-beds were so bright and gaudy that, Chap- lin remarked, thev reminded him of the American, Technicolor films. He would change that vulgar blaze of color: ‘Please don’t think this is in my taste,” he said. v5 (Continued on next page)