"Limelight's" scenario unquestionably sounds melodramatic. Various critics have expressed the opinion that it is poorly done. Its very construction involves instances of ineptness: the entire first part of the film is broken up by long monologues on the part of Calvero, and the dramatic action takes too long to get under way. Finally although it is fictitious the film has a number of sequences that sound a personal and autobiographical note which may strike some people as discordant.

But despite these seeming weaknesses, and perhaps even because of them, "Limelight" is a major work of extraordinary richness and unprecedented originality.

Its primary originality is precisely in the personal tone which Chaplin has adopted. Never before has the motion picture reached a similar degree of intensity in the dialogue between the author and his audience. Not that "Limelight" is a confidential work addressed only to the initiate. For here...