Chaplin Today: Limelight is an episode from a series made up of ten short films, each one running about half an hour; all of them made in France and spearheaded by Serge Toubiana, a one-time editor at the noted film journal, Cahiers du Cinema. For this project, Toubiana had the title of "Collection Director," meaning he's the one who culled all of the producing talents together - became, in essense, their managing editor. The ten films looked at the history behind ten of Chaplin's feature films. They also serve as - you might say - video essays for a contemporary filmmaker to express his or her feelings about that particular Chaplin movie. For instance, Chaplin Today: Limelight looks at Chaplin's 1952 tragi-comedy Limelight. And Bernardo Bertolucci, the Oscar®-winning director of The Last Emperor, gives his interpretation of the movie. B>Chaplin Today: Limelight also includes interviews with Chaplin's son Sydney and his Limelight co-star Claire Bloom, who reminisces about her experience working 51 years ago with Chaplin. She also discusses the tumultuous political climate of the early fifties and how it affected Chaplin, when he became the focus of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee during the Communist witch hunts of the time. And to futher enhance the experience, we're going to follow this documentary about Limelight with a showing of Limelight in it's entirety.

Producer: Serge Toubiana
Director: Edgardo Cozarinsky
Cast: Bernardo Bertolucci, Charles Chaplin.
BW & C-26m.

by Robert Osborne