The New Pictures

The Promoter (J. Arthur Rank; Universal-International) is a sprightly spoof that gives Alec (The Man in the White Suit) Guinness a role ideally suited to his deadpan comedy talents--that of a droll, eccentric fellow who achieves success not through industry or intelligence but through sheer brass. As Edward Henry ("Denry") Machin, Guinness is a washerwoman's son who gets ahead in the grimy town of Bursley. In grade school, he casually doctors his examination grades to pass with flying colors. Later, as a solicitor's clerk, he blithely adds his name to an invitation list to the fanciest ball of the year, where he boldly dances with the hostess, the Countess of Chell (Valerie Hobson). In time, he inveigles the countess into becoming patroness of a highly profitable thrift club he has set up. Through such bamboozling, Denry becomes wealthy, marries a beautiful young girl (Petula Clark) and gets to be the youngest mayor in Bursley's history. All in all, the yarn is a neat switch on the adage that worldly success is based on hard work and honesty.

As adapted by Eric Ambler from Arnold Bennett's 1911 novel The Card and directed by Ronald Neame, The Promoter steers a spry course between slapstick and social satire. The picture not only provides Guinness with a subdued, well-rounded characterization but also gives him an opportunity to indulge in a full measure of comedy falls--from hurtling headlong into a canal atop a careering van to racing around in an old cart behind a runaway mule. Glynis Johns as a dancing teacher and Valerie Hobson as the countess stroll attractively through their roles. One of the Bursley townsfolk remarks of Denry: "He's a rare 'un . . . But what's he done? Has he ever done a day's work in his life? What great cause is he identified with?" Replies a Denry fan: "He's identified with the great cause of cheering us all up." Guinness fans are likely to applaud the sentiment.

Limelight (Charles Chaplin; United Artists), Chaplin's first film in five years, is a sad disappointment. Intended as a tragicomedy, if not a tearjerker, it is a two-thirds bore that comes to life in the last half-hour or so, when the old-master clown stops trying to be pathetic and reverts to his inimitable proper stuff. The 63-year-old comedian, who wrote the script (and the music) and directed the movie, plays an aging, down-at-heel music-hall performer who saves a beautiful young ballet dancer (Claire Bloom) from suicide in World War I London. As she rises to success with his help, he sinks to the bottom. At the fadeout, the white-haired clown dies in the wings of a theater while the dancer he has befriended whirls onstage in "the glamour of limelight from which age must pass as youth enters."

Described by Chaplin as "a drama with comedy relief," Limelight avoids the ideological preoccupations and messages of his three previous films, Monsieur Verdoux (1947), The Great Dictator (1940) and Modern Times (1936), and goes back to the simple little tramp-meets-girl, loves-girl, loses-girl theme of his famed silent movies. But Chaplin no longer plays the tramp with the cane, battered derby, brush mustache and oversized shoes. In Limelight he is a dapper, though slightly seedy (and in heavy stage make-up rather repulsive) clown in spats and velvet-collared coat. Only a few reminders of the old tramp remain in a couple of music-hall sequences.

Gone, too, unfortunately, are much of the liveliness and visual wit of such Chaplin achievements as City Lights (1931) and The Circus (1928). The picture often comes close to a halt with lethargic talk and lackluster philosophizing. Chaplin didn't intend Limelight to be a comedy; he calls it "a two-handkerchief movie." But most moviegoers should find one handkerchief ample. As drama, the picture is largely barren: the clown is not really in love with the girl nor she with him, although she tries to be, out of gratitude. Her heart's desire is a young composer (played by Chaplin's 26-year-old son Sydney). Since the leading characters are only dancing a minuet, they can hardly reduce a stouthearted audience to sobs.

For all its wintry artificiality, a few of the individual performances sometimes have a springtime sweetness. In Claire Bloom,* Chaplin has found one of his loveliest leading ladies and an actress of lyric grace. Chaplin's own acting now & again glimmers with the poignancy of his internationally beloved little tramp. And in one magnificent music-hall scene, in which Chaplin plays a left-handed violinist and stony-faced Buster Keaton an impossibly nearsighted pianist, the two greatest comedians of the silent screen make Limelight glow with a sure sense of pantomime-timing, as crisply clean and uncluttered a masterpiece of comic craft as the screen is ever likely to see.

* Who is currently being acclaimed in London for her Juliet in an Old Vic production of Romeo and Juliet.

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