GERMANY: CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S SATIRE ON FASCISM FILM "THE GREAT DICTATOR" IS RE-RELEASED TO CLOSE THE BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL

Record ID: 389073

  • Title: GERMANY: CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S SATIRE ON FASCISM FILM "THE GREAT DICTATOR" IS RE-RELEASED TO CLOSE THE BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL
  • Date: 15th February 2002
  • Summary: BERLIN, GERMANY (FEBRUARY 15, 2002) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) SCU SOUNDBITE (English) GERALDINE CHAPLIN, ACTRESS AND CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S ELDEST DAUGHTER SAYING: " In the present world climate, when people hear that last speech, which lasts six minutes, it could have been written today, which is a shame really, as it means things haven't changed that much. The only difference i
  • Embargoed: 2nd March 2002 12:00
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  • Location: BERLIN, GERMANY
  • Country: Germany
  • Reuters ID: LVA7IV0FW967JJ78E4Q39KHZ3QIS
  • Story Text: Charlie Chaplins satire on facism 'The Great Dictator' which closed the Berlin Film Festival on Sunday, is just as relevant today as when it was made, according to Chaplins eldest daughter Geraldine.
    Charlie Chaplin's eldest daughter Geraldine said on Friday (February 15) her father's film, 'The Great Dictator' - a satire on fascism - was just as relevant today as when it came out in 1940.
    This film is as good now and as significant and as meaningful as it was 62 years ago, the 57-year-old actress told a news conference at the Berlinale as she promoted her new film, the Spanish-Argentine co-production 'The City of No Limits.' A showing of a restored version of 'The Great Dictator', which uses a print struck from the original negative and has a digitally remastered soundtrack, closed the Berlin festival.
    Filming started just days after World War Two erupted in 1939. Chaplin plays dictator Adenoid Hynkel, a parody of Hitler, and his double, a Jewish barber. A case of mistaken identity enables the barber to take Hynkel's place at a party rally, where he gives an impassioned speech for peace and toleration.
    Geraldine Chaplin said the speech could have been written today and it made her think of U.S. President George W. Bush.
    Listen to it and think of Bush and the world were living in, she told Reuters. It could be today...The only thing about that last speech that is not so today is the optimism.
    Although the speech has often been criticised as naive and out of kilter with the rest of the black-and-white classic, Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick said it was part of the reason he picked The Great Dictator to close the festival.
    'It is a really good speech for peace in the world, he said. Our theme is accept diversity and you will only have peace when people accept different cultures and religions.' However, a home movie that lay in a cellar for 60 years that documents the making of what was to become Chaplin's biggest hit, shows that he originally planned a different ending.
    Shown for the first time in public at the Berlinale as part of a new documentary, the rare colour footage found by Chaplin's children Christopher and Victoria at the familys home near Lake Geneva depicts the director agonising over how to end the movie.
    It was a very exciting discovery, said Kevin Brownlow, the director of The Tramp and the Dictator, a documentary which explores the parallel lives of Chaplin and Adolf Hitler, who were born in the same week of the same month -- April 1889.
    The amateur film shot by Chaplins brother Sydney film shows an alternative ending in which Hynkels fascist soldiers throw aside their weapons and link arms in a dance. The footage shows a frustrated Chaplin repeating the scene over and over again.
    I feel thrilled when you see footage like that and think why didn't he do that, said Brownlow, a film historian.
    The sequence never made it into the final version and 458 days into filming, as Hitler drove triumphantly into occupied Paris, Chaplin started to record his now famous plea for peace.
    The Tramp and the Dictator also explores pre-war resistance to Chaplins plan to make a satire about the Nazis both from the Hollywood film industry, concerned it could hurt business with Germany, and members of the U.S. Jewish community, who were worried it could exacerbate anti-Semitism.
    Others called the project courageous and it became Chaplin's biggest money spinner, even though he later said he would not have made it had he known the full horrors of the Holocaust.
    The Nazis mistakenly believed Chaplin to be Jewish, describing him as a disgusting Jewish acrobat in a 1934 propaganda leaflet, which his friend Ivor Montagu sent to him.
    It may well have contributed to his resolve to make the Great Dictator, Montagu says in the documentary.
    The documentary also speculates that Hitler actually saw The Great Dictator himself. Screenwriter Budd Schulberg, who attended the Nuremberg war crimes trials, noticed that the title was mentioned in a list of films that had been sent to Hitler.
    Reinhard Spitzy, a former aide to Hitler, confirms the theory: Hitler would have laughed at it. He wasnt a killjoy.
    Banned by the Nazis, the film was not shown in post-war West Germany until 1958. But Chaplin has the last laugh. The restored version of The Great Dictator shows on Sunday at new cinema complex that is a stones throw from the site of Hitler's bunker.
    He would have loved it, Geraldine Chaplin said. 'So many people here haven't seen it. It will be just mindboggling.' --
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