Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

LouHomey From my favorite movies..

Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

bluekarma06 Watched this very obscure but compelling movie made by the immortal Charlie Chaplin. A talkie, although he is widely more known for his silent movie career as the lovable hapless clown The Tramp. In this movie, he shows the man underneath the facade of the happy but ultimately sad clown. Slow at first but like a good novel, gradually brings you in as Chaplin masterfully lays the groundwork of background and character for a fuller appreciation which ultimately leaves you in awe of his enormous story-telling genius. Great cast, great dialogue(witty and philosophical at times), great great musical score(that Chaplin wrote and won an Oscar for 20 years later). Claire Bloom was perfectly cast as the suicidal ballerina that Chaplin saves and gives new hope too. Buster Keaton, Chaplin's comedic adversary all thru his silent career, makes a wonderful appearance at the end in a musical duet with Chaplin, a must-see. All in all, this movie was a sort of auto- biographical of both the Chaplin Tramp character he played to great success and his real life persona, which gradually suffered in contrast as cinema changed from silent to talking, black and white to color(movie is B&W) and his public disgracing as a Communist- sympathizer(untrue) in the early 1950's, when this movie was made but not released in America for that reason. It was finally released in 1972 and thus was awarded Best Oscar for the musical score, which strangely was one of the most popular instrumental songs of the 1950's!(it was called "'Eternally" on the pop-charts.) I highly recommend this masterpiece although it is a tough find. Try the torrent sites.

richard-1787 I just caught the last scene in this movie today, and found it literally breathtaking. The comedy skit before that, with Chaplin and the pianist, is both funny and disturbing. The violinist becomes demoniacal when he finally plays.But then when he starts to die, on the couch in the prop room, the movie becomes a study in carefully-controlled understatement. I was particularly struck by the moment immediately after he dies, on the bed in the wings, when someone pulls a white sheet up over him. The camera moves in and you expect the man will stop, or at least slow down, when the sheet gets to Chaplin's neck, so the camera can focus on his face. Not at all. The sheet is pulled all the way up, and the clown's body is carried off in the wings without one sentimental second. We are left watching the ballerina dancing, to Chaplin's Oscar-winning tune, followed by her perfectly projected shadows.It's a very impressive scene.Now I have to watch what leads up to it!

Anssi Vartiainen Charlie Chaplin is one of those figures that are so legendary in cinema nowadays that you're pretty much expected to know them. And also to love them. So is it wrong for me to say that I found this movie to be meandering and overly simplistic and long?I can still safely say that I liked it and I don't regret seeing it, but a lot of its running time is spent simply looking at Chaplin's clown routines on stage. Some of them are funny, most got me to smile, but none of them made me laugh. And I guess that's the problem. Humour is often heavily subjective and tied to culture, and thus to time. Some jokes and gags remain timeless, most do not.But luckily for me this is more than a comedy, though it is about comedy. It tells the story of one Calvero (Chaplin), a famous clown back in his glory days, who has now been reduced to a miserable drunk, reminiscing the days when a mere twitch of his eyebrow caused people to fall off their chairs. Enter Terry (Claire Bloom), a young dancer-to-be, who eventually, through miscellaneous happenstances, becomes something of a protégé for Calvero. It's a sweet little story, though it offers no surprises for a savvy viewer. Though that's not really the point. Its purpose is more reflective. Chaplin's own career was largely over at this point and it'd be hard not to draw comparisons, though the man himself claims it's not about him.In the end I'm in something of a bind. I like the reflective mood of the film, I like its thematics and I do like Bloom and Chaplin's chemistry together. But the overly long clown routines, the meandering dialogue scenes and the haphazard pacing mean that I can't call this a great movie. Still worth a watch though if you're into Chaplin.

grantss Not Charlie Chaplin's final movie, but it feels like it should be. There is a symmetry and poetry to this movie, like Chaplin was writing his own epitaph. Life's cycle is there for all to see.The last few scenes are great, and would have been a fitting way for Chaplin to sign off his careerCertainly not your average Chaplin movie. While there are some humorous moments, this is a drama, and a very poignant one too.Good performance by Chaplin in the lead role. Maybe a bit too speech-filled and theatrical for a movie - though the fault there would be with Chaplin the writer, not Chaplin the actor. Claire Bloom is great as the female lead. Sweet, beautiful and very convincing.Good to see Buster Keaton, albeit in a minor role. Not perfect, however. As mentioned, some of Chaplin's dialogue is overly theatrical and verbose. Plus, the point of the movie is soon obvious, but Chaplin draws it out unnecessarily. This results in the movie seeming to drag in places, especially in the latter half of the movie.Chaplin at his most symbolic and poetic.