Film-Philosophy 19 (2015)
Laughter and the Death of the Comic: Charlie Chaplin's The
Circus and Limelight in Light of the Ethics of Emmanuel
Levinas
Moshe Rachmuth1
In the climactic scene of The Circus (Charles Chaplin, 1928) the under
trained Tramp walks on a tightrope, a monkey sitting on his face with his
tail in Chaplin's mouth, a second monkey undressing him, and a third
throwing a banana peel on the rope, just in front of the Tramp's feet. Despite
the comic ingenuity of the scene, argues John Kimber, it has a limited effect
because the Tramp has no prospect for success: even if he dismounts the
tightrope unharmed, he cannot compete with the grace of Rex, 'the king of
the air,' and therefore cannot regain the love of Merna, who prefers Rex
over the Tramp. Kimber asserts that the Tramp's daring act falls short
because, '[it] is not for anything' (Kimber 2000, 163). This essay shows that
using the theory of Levinas, The Circus can be understood as a film about
the ethics of comedy, which involves actions that are done for nothing.
Moreover, it will be shown that Levinas missed the ethical potential of
Chaplin's work, and the contributions that comedy can make to Levinas's
theory, specifically to discussion of the saying and the said.
This study starts with examining The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925) to
show that even Chaplin's most popular comedies promote self-sacrifice.
After challenging the view of Levinas regarding the comedy of Chaplin, I
will use The Circus to exemplify how, for Chaplin, comedy is first produced
out of naïveté, later out of egotistic love, and then, finally, out of selfless
love to the one whose laughter is evoked. I will briefly return to Levinas to
show that The Circus tacitly conforms to the Levinasian view that, by
making the other laugh, the self becomes aware of its duty toward the other.
I will go on to argue how the idea of the comedian as hidden martyr
continues to inform Limelight (Charles Chaplin, 1952). The consistency of
Chaplin's view is expressed through a plotline that parallels The Circus,
except that Chaplin tries to be clearer in the later film and for this reason
adds a scene to Limelight in which the self-sacrifice is literalised as the
actual forfeiture of one's life.
1
University of Oregon: [email protected]
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I
It is only in recent years that film scholars became interested in Levinas's
work, probably due to the fact that, in his work, Levinas has been all but
indifferent to film. It is not that Levinas has been an admirer of art or
literature, his attitude to art has been, at best, ambivalent, but he did show
interest in art even if his main purpose had been to criticise the separation of
the aesthetic from the ethic. The fact that Levinas never wrote a work on
cinema and hardly mentioned it, even on the passing, has led to what Sarah
Cooper nicknamed, 'the occluded relation' between film studies and
Levinas. 2 Still, whether he would approve of it or not, Levinas has
influenced film makers (such as the Dardenne brothers), rock stars (for
example Israeli singer and writer Berry Sakharof who in 2001 released an
album titled, The Other) and eventually film scholars (thus, in 2007, Cooper
edited a special issue of Film-Philosophy, focusing on Levinas and cinema).
It is only natural that a person's thought can be applied to fields that the
person has not predicted and thus it should not be a surprise that Levinas's
ideas immigrate to cinema, transcultural studies (see footnote 1), and now,
as I show below, comedy.
As if in contradiction to Levinas, Chaplin uses comedy as a said that leaves
a trace of the saying, of the for-the-other, and even does so without
traumatising the same in the way that philosophy does. Levinas gives the
character of the Tramp as an example of the 'living being,' the one who has
not yet discovered the other: 'in the film The Gold Rush, Charlie Chaplin's
cabin is about to be hurled into an abyss by a blizzard. For Chaplin, closed
up inside the cabin without any opening onto the world, the blizzard is
reduced to the concerns of inside balance' (Levinas 1998, 14). Without any
moral dilemma, the Tramp just tries to survive. Although Levinas was
probably not interested in a close reading of The Gold Rush and most likely
used the cabin, teetering on the brink, only as a metaphor for the egotistic
self, it is still of importance to mention that ethics is a key player in this
unforgettable comic scene: the Tramp is not alone in the cabin but
accompanied by Big Jim, his partner-prospector, much taller and more
powerful than Chaplin. As the cabin tilts from side to side, and a door opens
above the abyss, the two prospectors effectively cooperate even as they
2
A similar 'occluded relation' has been the result of Levinas's indifference towards works of
literature that has been created outside the Judeo-Christian civilisation. Steven Shankman's
book, Other Others: Levinas, Literature, Transcultural Studies (2010) applies Levinas's
work to Chinese, Muslim and African pieces in a similar manner to how the contributors to
the special issue of Film-Philosophy (2007) have applied Levinas's work to a field he did
not originally work on. It is also worth mentioning that one of the contributors to that issue,
Sam B. Girgus, in his book, Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption: Time, Ethics, and the
Feminine (2010), applies the theory to films from the above mentioned Judeo-Christian
tradition but states that a work on Levinas and world cinema is called for.
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attempt to step on each other's head on the way out. Ethical questions,
although masquerading as action, are very much at the core of this scene as
can be understood from its climax: with the help of the Tramp, Big Jim
climbs out of the deathtrap, only to double the miracle by finding his longlost cache of gold outside the cabin. So far, Jim needed the Tramp to help
him find the gold, whose location Jim had forgotten because of a head
injury. Now that the gold has been found, he no longer needs the Tramp and
could simply abandon him to his destiny. Still, when the Tramp calls him
from inside the cabin, Jim saves his little friend. Through the discovery of
the gold, Chaplin demonstrates that cooperation, which could be understood
as self-interest, was actually based on a sense of fraternity. Moreover,
fraternity in Chaplin, as will be shown presently, exists not only when the
two parties are bound by an earlier agreement, as happens with the
prospectors.
II
Late in 1925, Motion Pictures Magazine informed its readers that after his
great success with The Gold Rush, Charlie Chaplin was planning to make
'his long deferred picture on the sad life of a clown' (Hayes 2005, 86). It is
my intention to show that the great director would go on to make not one
but two films on the sad life of a clown, first The Circus and then the much
later Limelight. I will now demonstrate that the figure of the sad clown
provided Chaplin with a particular framework of expressing his
understanding of the comedian as a hidden martyr—one who sacrifices his
good for that of others and asks for the sacrifice to remain unnoticed.
The Circus – a film whose exploration of the comic possibilities of selfsacrifice, which is not mitigated through a melodramatic ending, is unique
in Chaplin's work – has not yet received the attention it deserves. The film
(first screened in 1928) was filmed during Chaplin's traumatic divorce from
Lita Grey and is his only feature film not to be mentioned in his
autobiography of 1964. Chaplin's later avoidance of the film may explain
the small number of works that have been written about the film,
notwithstanding its great commercial and critical success.3
The lack of interest aroused by The Circus demands correction, if only
because the film brings up the question of catalysts and inhibitors of
laughter and, even more importantly, it explores the development of the
comedian. Starting with the question of what evokes laughter; this can be
studied from learning the reactions of the audience of the circus show, a
3
The film was the seventh-highest gross income earner silent film in history with 3.8
million dollars, only two places behind The Gold Rush with 4.25 million (Variety, 1932).
Moreover, that film has been praised by the critics of the New York Times (Maland 1989,
106) and the New Republic (Young 2006, 183).
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leitmotif in The Circus. The first time that the camera closes in on the
audience, its members are bored: one man is reading the newspaper, another
is staring with dismay, and a boy is yawning. They are looking at the group
of unsuccessful clowns chasing each other on a circular treadmill. The
routine is, however, interrupted as a poorly dressed man, with a hat and a
cane, looking genuinely terrified, invades the circus ring with a policeman
in pursuit. The spectators of The Circus know that the chase is real, but the
audience of the circus believes the chase to be part of the show. The Tramp
mounts the treadmill and the policeman follows. The audience roars with
laughter. The difference between the tedious routine of the clowns and the
hilarious pursuit of the Tramp by the policeman is that the latter pursuit has
an element of fear in it – although the audience within the diegesis expects
the Tramp to prevail (as this must be part of the show) there is a small fear –
aroused by the fact that they are wearing 'real' clothes and the fearful
expression on the Tramp's face – that the Tramp will be caught. At first the
Tramp prevails, so much so that he finishes a whole circle more than the
police officer and runs just behind him, hooking his cane on the shoulder of
Figure 1: The Tramp is about to crash into the ringmaster, who will fall on the policeman, creating havoc
the patrolman in order to save some energy. This moment of complete
reassurance is, of course, short lived as the Tramp loses his step, falls on the
treadmill, and is 'transported' back to the policeman, who stumbles on the
lying hobo, is shot out of orbit, and lands on the sand. As the officer gets up,
he is confronted by the ringmaster, who has come running to check the
disturbance of the show. The feet of the Tramp, who is still lying on the
rotating apparatus, hits the backside of the ringmaster, who then falls on the
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policeman. The Tramp uses the momentary misunderstanding between the
ringmaster and the officer to get up on his feet and flee to the backstage
area, now chased by both the policeman and the ringmaster. The audience
thunders, the man who was reading his paper now waves his hat, and the
boy is on his feet clapping and cheering. This magnificent scene has further
developments, but the idea is the same: the more characters the Tramp trips
up and the more complicated his situation becomes, the more the audience
laughs.
Despite the difference between what the circus audience believes and the
film spectators know,, they laugh for the same reason. The audience of the
'performance' of the Tramp in the ring and the spectators of the film both
laugh because they immerse themselves in what they know not to be real. In
that position, regressed to the place of a tickled child, they are almost
positive that the Tramp, with whom they identify, will not be harmed, but at
the same time they sense some risk of a real threat to the body of the Tramp
(which they equate with their own bodies). Without risk, as happens with
the clowns who run aimlessly on the treadmill prior to the entrance of the
Tramp and the policeman, there is no laughter.
Beyond this association of laughter with risk, The Circus addresses the
intriguing question as to what gives one the ability to cause laughter. The
first answer is naïveté: the Tramp, invading the routine of the clowns in the
ring, does not know that he is the comic center of the show. This lack of
knowledge is what make him a comic sensation. The audience roars as at
the end of his 'antics' he leaves the circus tent just as he entered, chased by
the same policeman. The 'clown-dressed-as-a-tramp,' as the audience
perceives him, is comic because, unlike the other clowns who are aware of
their being clowns in the ring, he is unaware of the fact that he is not in real
danger, as he is chased by the 'clown-dressed-as-a-policeman.' This enables
the audience to have the sense of fear that feels itself to be unrealistic. This
sense is needed to create laughter. In a similar manner, the viewers of the
film laugh because the Tramp takes the chase seriously, even though the
policeman shows his clumsiness again and again. It is the sense of danger of
the fugitive, combined with the clumsiness of the oppressor, that evokes the
laughter. The attack of the policeman, which in reality would be a serious
threat, is no more than a minor hassle to be feared only by the comic
character.
The thread of naïveté as the source of comic power continues to drive the
film. Noticing the success of the Tramp, the ringmaster (who is also the
owner of the circus and the stepfather of Merna, a circus rider) auditions the
Tramp to be a clown in the circus. When the Tramp consciously tries to be
funny he, unfortunately, fails, his failure a function of his inability to stay in
character. In the routine of 'William Tell,' he is supposed to stand with the
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apple on his head and munch the apple, while the clown who plays William
Tell walks to take his position. When biting the apple, the Tramp finds an
unscripted worm. He refuses to continue eating the apple and when offered
a new one, he rejects it, takes a banana out of his pocket, and lays it on his
head in place of the apple. The routine falls apart, and the Tramp is not
hired. The Tramp is not funny to those who audition him because he cannot
imitate naïveté, but at the same time he is funny for the viewers of The
Circus because he is too naïve to take part in the dishonesty involved in
imitating naïveté. The Tramp receives a new chance when, following a
strike of the property men of the circus, he is hired by the stage manager to
work as a property man. During his first night at the job, he is chased into
the ring by a mule, breaks a load of plates on the audience, falls into barrels,
and unwittingly presses the button on the magician's hidden contraption,
filling the ring with rabbits, pigeons, and popping balloons. The audience,
naturally, applauds the comeback of their beloved clown and the Tramp is
hired: to his knowledge, he is a property man, but in fact he is the comic star
of the whole circus.
Although naïveté is the original source of comedy, as can be found in
children (Freud 1960, 182-9),4 sooner or later naïveté must be replaced by
conscious representation of naïveté and motivation for this transfer is,
according to Chaplin, love. The new property man falls in love with the
stepdaughter of the ringmaster (Merna Kennedy) who is repeatedly denied
food by her violent and abusive stepfather. The Tramp has already fed the
girl in an earlier scene, but now that he works for the circus he has more
opportunities to help her. In a scene that uses the same footage that had
already been used twice during the title sequence, Merna practices on the
rings, hungry and fatigued when the 'property man' enters, loaded with food
he wants to share with her. When she says she cannot come down, probably
out of fear of her stepfather's wrath, the Tramp decides to throw the food up
to her. The way in which the camera (except for the establishing shot) never
has both of them in the same frame underlines the impossibility of them
sharing the same meal, an impossibility that challenges the Tramp to
sacrifice his food for her. The dilemma is intensified when the ringmaster
and head property man enter the frame and Chaplin has to throw the food up
behind their backs. When an uncaught pie falls back on the head of the head
4
Freud gives the example of a three and a half German-speaking girl who, after being
forced to take medicine warns her brother of “bubin”. In German, “medicine” (“medizin”)
is similar in sound to “mädi [little-girl]-zin,” so the girl concluded that if a girl gets mädizin then a boy would get “bubi [little-boy]-zin”. Freud explains that if somebody would
consciously try to make this word-play as a joke it would not be a successful one.
Therefore, Freud concludes, at least part of the comic power of an action (and in young
children, most of it) comes from the naïveté of the person. In older children and in adults
the comic effect is produced by what Freud calls “misleading naïveté” - unauthentic naïveté
used to gain freedom of action that would otherwise be forbidden.
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property man, the Tramp tries to explain to the infuriated managers that the
pie is not a pie but a bird's excrement. Thus, the Tramp uses comedy as part
of courting: he laughs at a third person, the head property man, who is the
enemy of his love object, Merna, as part of his attempt to show that he is on
her side and will risk himself for her.
Figure 2: For me?' Merna is happy to have some food
Comedy, however, does not prove itself as an effective courting technique
since it exposes weaknesses of the suitor. Thus, the throwing of the pie on
the chief property man reveals not only the feelings that the Tramp has for
Merna, but also his lack of power to confront her oppressors. Moreover, the
Tramp is not only powerless but a coward, not somebody to look up to: in a
brief yet magnificent scene, to be contrasted with the ring scene just
mentioned, the Tramp runs away from the lion’s cage and climbs to the end
of a pole outside the main tent. When Merna arrives and asks him to come
down, 'the little fellow,' caught in his cowardice, tries to improve his image
through acrobatics. He spreads his arms and waves them up and down as if
he were a bird. When he slides down the pole, using only his legs to control
the movement, the effect is of a flying man. Arriving to the ground, he sits
down below her. The attempt to charm does not work and Merna soon
changes her love object to one whose manhood is not compromised. A new
performer joins the circus, the tall and handsome Rex, the tightrope walker,
and Merna immediately falls in love with him. When Rex performs, some
thirty feet above the ground, Merna invites the Tramp to sit with her and
watch her new love interest. Again, the Tramp and Merna are shot in the
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same frame, but this time their gazes are cast upward, to the top of the tent,
where Rex performs his daring act. To be sure, there is nothing unappealing
or unsavory about Rex (played by Harry Crocker): he is not the classic
antagonist of a romantic comedy, the rich and ugly man whom Pantaloon
wants as his son-in-law. Still, all of Rex’s actions can be explained as
serving the self, and even though he takes risks (on the rope, and later by
eloping with Merna), they are all calculated and successful. He loves Merna
as an extension of his own ego.
As long as one thinks of love as a self-serving emotion, the love triangle of
Rex, Merna and the Tramp is ineffective for three reasons: (1) the character
of the antagonist, (2) the unclear result of the attempt to win back the heart
of the beloved, and (3) the final refusal to be with the beloved. I will now
explain the three problems and show how each is solved, once one reads
The Circus as a film that calls for a love that does not serve the self but the
Other. More specifically, I will make the argument that the Tramp wants the
good of the circus rider, regardless of whether his love is reciprocated. Let
me start with Rex. Rex is a sympathetic character and in this sense, as one
critic writes, 'Rex is even worse than Georgia's Jack [in The Gold Rush],
because he hasn't the advantage of being a lout' (Kimber 2000, 161). He is
worse in the sense that he is not somebody that the 'girl' should be saved
from. In the character of Rex, Chaplin digresses from the conventions of
both comedy and melodrama (his two genres, or as Linda Williams would
have it, 'modes'): he creates a true moral dilemma, as the Tramp has to
choose between his own good – to be with Merna – and Merna's good,
which may be to marry Rex.
The second feature of the film that is difficult to explain within the
framework of romantic love is the Tramp’s decision to perform the
tightrope act. One night, long after Rex is established as Merna's love
interest, Rex is not to be found, and the Tramp agrees to the ringmaster's
demand to replace 'the king of air'. One critic, Ira Jaffe, claims that the
Tramp performs the daring act because he is still trying to win the woman's
love. Within his assumption, he correctly remarks that the Tramp makes a
bad decision, 'for he proposes to remake himself in Rex's image rather than
his own' (Jaffe 1984, 206). It is not, however, clear that the Tramp walks the
tightrope in order to impress Merna and win her love. He indeed begins
practicing on the rope in the hope of surpassing Rex, but it is clear, even to
him, that he is no competitor for 'the King of Air,' as Rex is advertised. On
that specific evening, something unique happens: the ringmaster, as usual,
strikes his stepdaughter, and the little property man, as always, comes to her
help. This time, however, the ringmaster ignores the Tramp’s attempt to
interfere. The Tramp’s influence is diminished now that he has ceased being
funny, and the ringmaster no longer cares if he quits the show. The [here
again] Tramp must re-establish himself as a source of income so that the
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ringmaster will find it worthwhile to listen to his demands and cease
abusing his stepdaughter. Against all hope, but consistent with the logic of
comedy, the Tramp succeeds in staying on the rope despite his safety
harness coming loose, a runaway monkey attacking his face, another
monkey undressing the novice acrobat, and a third one dropping a banana
peel on the tightrope. The audience reacts with incomparable excitement,
ensuring both the Tramp's return to stardom and the girl’s rescue. This
glorious moment is, as one would expect from a comedy, short lived.
Dismounting the tightrope on a bike, the Tramp fails to stop the bicycle and
continues out of the circus tent and into a grocery store where his foot
strikes the proprietor’s behind, pushing him face down into a barrel of flour.
This last accident, quite harmless and possibly unintentional, serves to
detract from the Tramp’s righteousness. Furthermore, when he runs back to
the circus and finds the stepfather, again, unjustifiably hitting the
stepdaughter, the Tramp does not use his renewed popularity to stop the
stepfather. Instead he knocks down the big man and punches him (to the
pleasure of the viewers of The Circus). The chief property man comes to aid
the ringmaster, and together they expel the Tramp from the circus. The
Tramp’s failure is not a failure to win the woman's heart – that had been lost
for a long time now – but a failure to come to terms with her abusive
stepfather.
Figure 3: One monkey bites the Tramp's nose
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Figure 4: ...while another undresses him
Comedy in The Circus thus originates in naïveté, then from egotistic love,
and finally from selfless love. (We will see a similar pattern when
discussing Limelight). Without interpreting the Tramp's behavior in the last
part of the film as self-sacrifice, the motivation of the Tramp in the last part
of the film, once his chances with Merna are gone, remains indecipherable.
In this vein, John Kimber writes: 'Charlie's love, which is over almost as
soon as it has begun, is not allowed to generate much business. The
weakness effects even the tightrope act, which is not for anything' (Kimber,
163). Exactly so: the act is for nothing! And it is so because it signifies an
ethical system where one does for the other without expectation to 'generate
much business.' Like Kimber, Levinas italicises the 'for' but for the opposite
reason:
What the preceding pages aimed to suggest is a signification where
the for of the-one-for-the-other, outside of any correlation and any
finality, is a for of total gratuity, breaking with interest: for
characteristic of the human fraternity outside of any pre-established
system. (Levinas 1981, 96–97)
Once one accepts the dissociation of fraternity from interest, the Tramp's
will to defend Merna explains his motivation to walk on the tightrope, even
if this will is no longer based on the hope that his love will be reciprocated.
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The third inexplicable feature of The Circus, namely, that the Tramp unites
Merna and Rex in matrimony, becomes almost trivial once The Circus is
understood as a film that demonstrates the transformation of the comic into
a hidden self-sacrificing person. After the Tramp is fired from the circus he
sits at the outskirts of town, in the dark of night, warming his hands by a
small fire. Merna suddenly appears and explains her surprising arrival with
the pun 'I ran from the circus.' She asks to stay with Charlie but he, instead
of accepting her offer, asks her to stay put while he goes to Rex, gives him
the ring that he, the Tramp, bought earlier in the hope of proposing to
Merna, and convinces the tightrope artist to marry her. This move,
uncommon in comedy generally and particularly in Chaplin's comedy,5 is
clear if and only if the Tramp does not work out of self-interest: Merna
loves Rex and he will be a good husband for her and therefore she should be
married to him.
The very last shot of the film, through the image of the star, connotes the
idea of the film: the Self is given too great an importance, and it is for
comedy to expose this mistake. After Rex and Merna marry, they return to
the circus and persuade the stepfather to allow the Tramp to join them in the
caravan that is just about to leave the city. Despite the couple's invitation
and the ringmaster's agreement, the Tramp does not hop on one of the
wagons but stays behind, probably because once Merna is safe within the
institution of marriage there is no point in him suffering the pain of
witnessing Merna's love for Rex. As the train disappears, he sits on a crate
inside the ring, which is by now only a circle in the sand. A close-up on his
face shows his sense of emptiness and loss. Suddenly he spots a scrap of
white paper on which a dark star is drawn. This particular star has been seen
many times earlier in The Circus – it is stretched on hoops to intensify the
effect caused by a rider, a clown, or an animal jumping through that hoop.
The first shot of the film, in fact, is of such a hoop, whose star is torn by an
unidentifiable body jumping through it. When the Tramp re-encounters the
all-too-familiar star at the end of the film he crumples it into a paper ball,
rises to his feet, throws the paper ball in the air, kicks it with his left heel,
and walks away from the camera. It is clear, from the way he throws his
oversized shoes in the air and playfully spins his cane, that he is light and
cheerful; after kicking the wrinkled star – after relinquishing stardom – he is
back to being the Tramp; he is, once again, a comic. Understanding the
paper star as signifying the shallowness of stardom would be enough to
explain the Tramp's overcoming the loss of his position in the circus. But it
will not explain his recovering from the lost love. In the context of the love
triangle, the star signifies the 'living being,' not yet traumatised by
5
As Kimber writes: 'The Circus is the only film in which Charlie, as well as accepting the
frustration of his love, actually contrives to bring the girl and his rival together (2000,
161).'
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consciousness of the other. The star that is torn apart at the beginning of the
film gives notice, among other things that the film is going to shred that
confident self to pieces. The same idea is visualised comically at the end of
the film, when the star-self is crumpled and tossed away like a scrap of
paper. The Tramp is light because he has transcended that egotistic self
through his openness to the Other. The ability to love for the sake of the
Beloved and not for the sake of the lover has uplifted him. Moreover, it is
this ability of selfless giving that enables comedy that is beyond both
naïveté and the regression to naïveté through egotistic love.
III
Limelight, Chaplin's autobiographical sound film of 1952, provides for a
more melodramatic rather than comic account of the origins and telos of
comedy. The idea of making a film about a comedian who dies on stage
had occurred to Chaplin as early as the 1920s, but he did not go that far in
The Circus (Maland 1989, 105 and Hayes 2005, 86). Almost thirty years
later, Chaplin developed his idea to the full in the character of Calvero, a
retired clown whose prime days with 'the Tramp' figure are long gone, but
whose love for a younger woman propels him back to the music-hall stage.
The frame is, obviously, autobiographical (the use of 'the Tramp' needs no
explanation and Chaplin's wife at the time, Oona, was thirty-six years
younger than he) an effect that is intensified by setting the film in 1914
London, Chaplin's hometown, and the use of five of his children in the
film.6 What is important for the current discussion, however, is not the
autobiographical dimension but the handling of the ethical sources of
comedy. The film starts with the alcoholic Calvero (Chaplin) entering the
apartment building where he lives, smelling gas and rushing to save the life
of Terry (Claire Bloom) a young ballerina who is driven to attempt suicide
because of a paralysis of her legs. Since the young woman has no financial,
physical, or emotional support, Calvero keeps her in his home, where he
takes care of her needs.
The old clown tries to bring the ballerina back to her feet, literally and
figuratively, but what is more interesting is that his attempts to build her
career make him contemplate his past failures and successes. In the first
night after he saves her, while a musical band of beggars plays on the street,
he dreams of one of his routines, in which he portrays a flea circus trainer:
one of his fleas, Phyllis, 'flees' the circus and takes refuge in Calvero’s
underpants, which was her home prior to her being 'discovered.' The
audience laughs and applauds as Phyllis’s bites drive Calvero off stage. The
6
This is noted by David Robinson in his introduction to the film on the MK2 version.
Robinson also mentions that Chaplin's wife, Oona, doubled for Claire Bloom in two scenes
and that there were other family appearances in the film.
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hall is silent, however, when he returns for a second round of applause.
With horror, he discovers that the seats are empty and he wakes up. The
routine of his show tired the audience as much as it tired Phyllis, the flea,
and like the pest, the audience deserts the repetitious performance.
Not unlike The Circus, Limelight presents love as the second source of
comedy, once novelty is gone. In the second night, after the dancer wakes
and they talk, clarifying in a Victorian way that Calvero is sexually
impotent, he again falls asleep to the music of the vagabonds beyond the
window. Again he dreams that he is performing in the music hall, but this
time Terry is performing with him and the theme is love. He is dressed as a
version of the Tramp (the cane, a bigger mustache, and a straw hat) and she
wears a topless dress and holds a parasol. The erotic tension, which in their
actual conversation is abstract and indirect, becomes concrete in the comic
sketch. In the real conversation, Terry says she tried to end her life partly
because life has no meaning, to which Calvero replies, 'life is a desire, not a
meaning.' This philosophical comment acquires a comic dimension when, in
the sketch he holds her waist and says 'I'm grasping the meaning of life.' She
agrees and asks, 'where are we going?' as her hand is probing his pockets.
They leave the stage to the cheering sound of the audience. Love has
brought Calvero's audience back because of its reinvigorating power. Desire
makes the clown funny once again, as he hides his egotistic erotic desire
under the mask of high love and poetry. Furthermore, the suitor is the
trickster who is tricked, as his successful attempt to dupe a hug out of the
woman he desires is in fact her success in picking his pocket.
The plot structure continues to follow The Circus, strengthening my
argument that we are watching a long-sustained understanding of comedy
by Chaplin. As in the 1928 production, the comedian's egotistic love in
Limelight is short lived: Terry reveals that she has feelings for a young, poor
musician she once knew, Neville, (played by Chaplin's son, Sydney). In
light of this development, it is no wonder that Calvero's attempt to go back
on stage fails and we witness a failing performance of his 'Oh for the Life of
a Sardine' routine, in which the entire audience walks out on him. Although
the plot of Limelight is significantly more layered and complex than that of
The Circus, and although the main characters are more developed, there is
another crucial motive that is repeated: despite the fact that Neville
reappears in Terry's life, and because she is not sure of his intentions toward
her, she offers to marry Calvero. Calvero's ethical greatness, like that of the
little property man in Chaplin's earlier film on comedy, is in his forfeiture of
the opportunity because it is not in the best interest of the beloved woman.
In Limelight, however, Chaplin develops the idea of comedy as selfsacrifice into a major theme of the film, elaborating the difference between
egotistic love and love for the sake of the other. Despite Calvero's refusal to
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marry, and despite her love for Neville, Terry continues to ask the old
comedian to become her husband. Together, they perform in a big
production for which Neville writes the music before being drafted into the
army. The production – a ballet about Columbine's death that will be
discussed when I compare Columbine's death with Calvero's death – is a
great success but not due to Calvero's performance. Unloved and not
courageous enough to sacrifice his convenience of living with Terry,
Calvero is unfunny, and the producer thinks of replacing him. It is only
now, when Calvero sees that he is a burden on Terry’s career that he finally
decides to leave. The next we see of him, he plays the street with the band
of beggars that we have seen at the beginning of the film and he is singing
'It's love love love love love love love love...' Calvero is, at last, amusing,
light and cheerful. Again, he is in love, but now it is love for the sake of
another. His new life as a tramp comes from his unselfish love for Terry. It
is the ability to abandon the comfort of the I for the sake of the other that
gives birth to Calvero's comedic power.
At this point the narrative is complete, but Chaplin wants to avoid any
possible interpretation of Calvero's acts as anything else than sacrifice and
therefore continues. Since the retired star seems to be content as a street
performer, one may think that he left his apartment for his own good,
similar to how one might interpret the Tramp's jolly walk toward the
horizon, in The Circus, as a relief of his duties to others. To avoid such a
possibility, Chaplin arranges for Calvero to have one last appearance at the
Empire Hall, a gala night for the old comedian, in which he will die while
the audience laughs. Calvero opens the show, to be followed by Terry, who
by now is a renowned ballerina, and other performers. We see scraps of his
show, including the song on the sardine, beautifully performed. The words
of this song foreshadow what is to come as it presents a man who believes
in reincarnation and wants to come back as a sardine: 'Cavorting and
spawning every morning/ Under the deep blue sea/ To have no fear for
storm nor gale/ Oh to chase the tail of a whale!/ Oh for the life of a sardine!/
That is the life for me!' The laughter of the audience is based on the relief of
the seriousness of death, combined with some fear that is aroused at merely
hearing mention of the subject. What the comedian sacrifices to get this
laughter is the empathy toward him – he is content with the hope of being
re-born as a sardine, so why should the audience worry about him? Note,
however, that the comedian does not offer the full relief that a religious
leader, promising eternal life or salvation, would.
Comedy, according to Chaplin, is self-sacrifice masked as naïveté, as can be
seen from the concluding routine of Limelight. For the encore of his last
performance, Calvero is accompanied by an 'old friend' (played by the
legendary Buster Keaton). The two pantomime serious musicians: a pianist
(Keaton) who cannot arrange the notes on the piano without them falling
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Film-Philosophy 19 (2015)
into his lap, and a violinist (Calvero) who has difficulties keeping both his
legs at the same length. Their incapability in starting their musical act peaks
after the pianist steps on Calvero's violin. The punch-line is that Calvero
extracts an extra violin from his pants. Music starts: a crazy presto, with the
sound of Roma music, which later gives way to softer, more romantic, and
melancholic strains. Calvero kisses the violin and then the music returns to
its original, fast pace. The effect – that the players are obsessed with music
– is intensified by Calvero's gaping eyes and exaggerated frozen smile. The
two are so into the music that they lose control: the pianist falls from his
chair but continues playing, lying on the floor, with only his hands raised to
the piano keys. The violinist falls and rolls off stage and into the bass drum.
He continues playing, as he is carried back-stage, his torso locked in the
drum and the audience out of its mind with laughter; a fall like this seems so
painful and yet he continues to play. Laughter is based on the relief
combined with the small fear that a real injury has been done; comedy is
based on the will to take the fall and fake a lack of acknowledgment of the
pain. Even though Calvero has been hurt by the fall,7 he asks to be carried
back to the stage in the drum, to reassure the audience that he is fine. In the
same manner, a minute later, he tells Terry about his plans for the future,
faking a lack of knowledge of his coming death.
Figure 5: The obsessed fiddler
7
He thinks he broke his spine, but later the doctor diagnoses it as a heart attack.
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Film-Philosophy 19 (2015)
The social function of the comedian, according to Limelight, is of the one
who gives comfort in the face of life's inevitable sufferings, specifically old
age and death. Terry is called to the stage just before Calvero dies, and he
asks to see her dance for the last time. The couch he is lying on is carried to
the wings of the stage, where he closes his eyes, never to open them again.
The camera moves to Terry dancing and fades to black. It has already been
remarked that the carrying of the couch is parallel with the carrying of
Columbine's bed in the ballet, but the meaning of this mise en abyme has not
been accounted for. In the ballet, the dying Columbine asks to be carried to
the window to look at her beloved London for the last time, foreshadowing
Calvero's request to see Terry. The ballet, however, has a second part in
which the spirits tell Harlequin not to weep for Columbine, for 'his love is
not in the grave but everywhere.' The meaning of being everywhere must be
that every soul is a part of a great immanent being, natural or divine; every
human is one part in a cycle that continues after her or his death or, in other
words, every person is part of totality. Understood in this manner, Calvero's
descent to the streets marks his acceptance of the natural principle of life
and should not be read as a sacrifice at all. Such a reading would also be in
accordance with the subtitle of the film, 'The glamour of limelight from
which age must pass as youth enters.' It may be that Calvero is sacrificing
nothing, as the subtitle and the end of the ballet imply, but to believe so
would mean to be duped by comedy and evade the model of the comedian.
The career of Calvero ends with or without his consent, so much is true, but
he denies himself the right to be cared for or at least empathised with. In the
ballet, Harlequin dances only after he takes care of Columbine by her
deathbed and mourns her, while in Limelight, Terry is called to dance prior
to Calvero’s death, and the last that she hears from him are his plans for the
future that he knows will never occur. Thus, the comedian hides his
suffering to lighten the burden of his audience.
In both The Circus and Limelight, Chaplin shows the comedian as someone
who sacrifices his own good for the good of others, specifically as one who,
disillusioned with the hope for reciprocal love, still works for the interest of
the one he loves. In both films deliberate comicality (not of the sort that the
Tramp possesses as long as he thinks he is a regular property) starts from
the hope to be loved but matures through self-sacrifice that is denied. The
comedian, in his pseudo-naïveté, lets the audience admit the fear but at the
same time dismiss it, as if being was nothing but a child's game, a tickle.
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Filmography
The Circus (1928), Charlie Chaplin, USA.
The Gold Rush (1925), Charlie Chaplin, USA.
Limelight (1952), Charlie Chaplin USA.
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