Limelight

Year of Release:  1952
Director:  Charles Chaplin
Screenplay:  Charles Chaplin
Starring:  Charles Chaplin, Claire Bloom, Nigel Bruce, Buster Keaton, Sydney Earl Chaplin, Wheeler Dryden, Norman Lloyd
Running Time:  137 minutes
Genre:  Comedy-drama

London, 1914:  Calvero (Chaplin), a once famous comedian who is now a washed up drunk, rescues a young woman, Thereza (Bloom), from suicide.  As he nurses her back to health, Calvero learns that Thereza is an aspiring ballerina.  He helps her regain her confidence to dance again, and in the process finds himself yearning to return to the stage.

This was not Chaplin's last film, but it does feel like a final film.  It heavily references Chaplin's own life and career, the film is set in London, where Chaplin grew up, and takes place in 1914, the year of Chaplin's own debut.  Calvero became famous, like Chaplin, by playing tramp character, and, again like Chaplin, is left behind by a changing world and changing audiences.  Although the film has comedy in it, including a hilarious silent skit between Chaplin and fellow silent comedy legend Buster Keaton, this is essentially a drama.  The film is overlong and feels at times like a filmed play, it also suffers from some quite obvious back projection.  However I feel this is one of Chaplin's best films.  The film is melodramatic, and the speeches may seem naive, but there is real power to it, and it feels very heartfelt.  Certainly by the end, it's hard not to have tears in the eyes.  This is a very personal film and it's rare that you find a film that does feel as if it is a direct message to the audience.  It's a film about success, failure, the possibility of redemption, the power of art and the necessity of facing life and persevering, no matter how painful that may be. 
  

Make 'em laugh: Thereza (Claire Bloom) and Calvero (Charlie Chaplin) in Limelight.

The Great Dictator

Year of Release:  1940
Director:  Charlie Chaplin
Screenplay:  Charlie Chaplin
Starring:  Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Henry Daniell, Reginald Gardiner, Billy Gilbert, Maurice Moscovich
Running Time:  124 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, satire, drama

Following the resounding defeat of Tomania in the First World War, ruthless fascist dictator Adenoid Hynkel (Chaplin), leader of the Double Cross Party, has risen to power.  Meanwhile a poor Jewish barber (also Chaplin), who has suffered amnesia for the twenty years since the First World War, leaves the hospital and returns home to the ghetto.  The barber soon falls in love with his neighbour Hannah (Goddard), and together they stand up against Hynkel's forces.

This was Chaplin's first true sound film, having come to fame during the silent era, Chaplin was one of the few film-makers to successfully continue making silent films well into the sound era.  However, the film has dialogue-free passages, and most of the humour is the physical comedy that made Chaplin famous.  It was also one of the first major Hollywood films to openly attack and mock Nazi Germany and Hitler himself (Hitler banned the film from being shown in Germany and  Nazi occupied countries, although apparently he saw it himself twice - what he thought of it has not been recorded).
Given the full horror of the Nazis it does seem strange to portray them as basically a gaggle of dim-witted, bullying clowns (Chaplin himself said that he would not have made the film if he had been aware at the time of what the Nazis were actually doing), but it is an effective film, and quite brave for the time.  The mockery is pretty scathing, and the film is genuinely funny, containing possibly Chaplin's funniest work.  The film concludes with an impassioned final speech, one of the finest in cinema, and elevates the film to the pantheon of the great. 

Charlie Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel in The Great Dictator