I think that [Limelight] is to be considered a mea culpa: an expression by the comedian that is more than art or entertainment; in brief, a moral credo that was designed to set everyone straight about its creator's positive and enduring convictions as a member of human society. It would be foolish to pretend such an assumption is irrelevant; that a work of art or a piece of entertainment is that and no more, has no moral value, and is not to be construed as an expression of private opinion, and so on. There are myriad signs that Monsieur Verdoux, like its predecessor The Great Dictator, not merely carried a view of contemporary life intended seriously in the moral sense but also was Chaplin's personal platform as a contemporary thinker. (p. 75)

In The Great Dictator, Chaplin dissolved the traditional Tramp into two strictly contemporary phases of social personality: Hitler's parody, Hynkel, was bohemian, irresponsible, hallucinated, malevolent, and generally unhappy and frustrated; the Barber was gentle, humble, gay, loving, loved, and well acquainted with decent human values. If we reflect upon the long film repertory of the Tramp from the year when his original arrived on American soil, 1913, we may observe that as a personality he has exhibited, from time to time, all those qualities belonging respectively to the "twins" of The Great Dictator!…

What happened, then, to induce Chaplin to convert the Tramp into a split-personality? Historic events "happened"; Hitler "happened." And what happened to make Monsieur Verdoux, in effect, more like the Dictator-half than like the Barber-half? The Second World War, and its dark international heritage, "happened." At least, these are the self-evident explanations from Chaplin's viewpoint, and they are chronologically consistent with the appearances of the film-works. (p. 76)

What may be termed … the "economic necessity" for Chaplin's changing the Tramp's personality becomes quite clear. To the comic artist's imagination, the significant thing became not the subjective impossibility of having a permanent job, which was the Tramp's case, but the objective impossibility of having one, which was the Barber's case…. The Second World War had vindicated the structure of the social-political plot in which the Tramp's heir found himself in The Great Dictator, yet it failed to justify the moral hope contained in the oratorical plea tagging that film: the plea in which all the Tramp's good and constructive qualities were presented frankly as propaganda for the democratic faith. It was as though the Tramp in 1940 publicly pleaded for the heart of his human reality—and forth-with was snubbed by the universal social destiny: a frightful war.

Monsieur Verdoux, as a result of this reasoning, appears an entirely lucid if treacherous heir of the Tramp in Chaplin's imaginative world. (p. 77)

When Chaplin … wished to make a kind of peripety, a "moral" reversal, in his art by coming back to the human goodness and charm of the tramp, it was artistically and morally inevitable that it should take the form of his imaginary hero's pure and genuine, and radically selfless, love. We have arrived at the theme of Limelight. (p. 78)

I believe that nobody who knows Chaplin's film history can see Limelight without being aware how much it is the artist's moral testament. (p. 79)

The point is now how exact is the parallel between his private life and the imaginary story of the screen; obviously, the parallel is most inexact. But the literal parallel is not the one that is relevant here. When, at the end of Limelight, the injured Calvero, following his last performance, dies in the wings while watching his lovely protegée achieve a dancing triumph on stage, what appears to us is the very symbolism which has been especially accented in this situation. The hero's "job" is the professional comic art and only old age has withered his greatness in it. A ballet presented earlier in the film has made it clear that the girl dancer is a symbol of resurrection and external beauty. Thus, in terms of the traditional love legend, the female ideal now appears as the professional spirit of beauty, its Muse. Essentially, in Chaplin's art, woman was the inspiration of sentiment to transcend all real circumstance and create a pure imaginative domain. Art is what gives this visionary domain concreteness. (pp. 79-80)