FILM CHRONICLE
669
and he makes it with the authority that belongs to him, but there is
something questionable in his making such a statement at all: it would
come better from us who watch him.
Verdoux, despite his pretensions, was still basically a figure of ab–
surdity, clearly unable to understand how one must get along; in his
way he was just as "innocent" as the Tramp. Calvero, on the other
hand, is not supposed to be in himself a clownish figure, he is just a.
clown by profession. In fact there must be such a division in Chaplin's
personality; if there weren't, he would be insane. But his function as
an artist is to demonstrate that in some fundamental sense the division
is a false one; when he succeeds in obliterating it, as he was able to do
entirely in the character of the Tramp and very largely even as Verdoux,
he is closest to the kind of truth that most intimately belongs to him
and most deeply implicates his audience. In
Limelight
he makes it very
clear that he knows this. But, again, his knowledge is not what counts;
a clown knows nothing, he only exists. Finding it necessary to make a
direct examination of his problem as an artist, Chaplin is forced to
repeat in
the
structure of the movie itself tha t division between reality
and comedy, between dignity and drunkenness, which is the problem
the movie deals with. The scenes of actual clowning are presented
simply as stage performances, a kind of documentation of the case of
the clown Calvero who has "lost his funny-bone," whereas the movie
proper, so to speak, is only occasionally funny, and never very much.
The most disturbing thing about Verdoux was that one did Dot
always know how much he was supposed to be accepted on his own
terms, how much Chaplin himself was implicated in Verdoux's murders.
With Calvero we are left in no such uncertainty: he is Charles Chaplin
"in person" presiding at the telling of his own story and not for a
moment relinquishing control.
If
Chaplin is willing in the role of Calvero
to acknowledge his own sense of failure, it is only while making it plain
that he will be the one to define what is meant by failure.
If
he has
Calvero die breathing that lame little sentence about the enigma of
the heart and the mind, it is not because he sees the sentence as
dramatically appropriate, but because he thinks it expresses in itself a
profound philosophical and poetic truth. The trouble is that it undeni–
ably does, and there seems to be nothing in Chaplin's education or sensi–
bility to tell
him
what the sentence lacks. And yet, whatever might be
true of his education, has he not shown us over and over a sensibility
a hundred times more delicate than our own?
Here we come back to that coldness of heart which seems to belong
inextricably to Chaplin's genius. It must often have been said of him
