Even the scoffers will have to admit that there are times in the film when Charles Caplin proves beyond misgiving that he is the first clown of the cinema. There has never been anyone to equal him.

What comes through most clearly in Limelight, however, is that Chaplin had come to terms with his life.

Intended as a tragicomedy, if not a tearjerker, it is a two-thirds bore that comes to life in the last half-hour or so, when the old-master clown stops trying to be pathetic and reverts to his inimitable proper stuff.

Frankly, it's a film that, despite its noble intentions, I find clumsy and exhausting in its indulgent tragedy about the decline of a stage actor, played by Chaplin as a fictional version of himself. [Full review in Spanish]