Johannes in retroland

Archive for September, 2006

Limelight, the most emotional of films, is all about the death of emotions – as such a major theme developed with pathetic consistency in Hollywood films, whether screwball or noir or whatever. When we think of Chaplin’s art of combining the abstract and concrete, real and surreal, hard fact and dream, the present with the past and the imagined, and again the effortless mixing of the pantomime, ballet, burlesque, dialogue and monologue into an indivisible whole, simple as a moment in nature, we can well sense how far Limelight is from the ordinary Hollywood fare; it should sooner be placed among films like Citizen Kane, Ivan Groznyi and Alf Sjöberg’s Miss Julie. The differences between life and art, the personal and the historical and so on loose their point.

Bron: sensesofcinema.com

Bron: esquire.com/covergallery