co-produced documentary that will premiere at the Berlinale surprised
with colorful scenes.
At a special little similarity between Charlie Chaplin and Adolf
Hitler in the British magazine "Spectator" in an article on the 50th
Birthday was in April 1939 (Charlie was four days older than Adolf)
first pointed out: The same narrow mustache adorned his upper lip of
the slapstick Tramps and the German "Führer".
Scene from "The Great Dictator": "Best Documentary about the Third Reich"
Together the two was also the source of oppressive conditions
miserable and probably the raging ambition, let this misery far, too
far behind. But while the radiant, and rose by 30 years the world by
far the highest paid actor, the other was after the First World War as
a failed artist deeper than ever knocked back in his misery. Whether
he has ever seen the acclaimed burlesque, in which Chaplin went to
work in front of the poor pigs with spiked helmets and their emperor
is not known.
Twenty years later, Hitler had made his way to at least as great fame
as a comedian, and that was what the author of Double Birthday article
in the "Spectator" probably not guessed by now, almost a little
obsessively busy to look at leaders newsreels: Chaplin was preparing
his film "The Great Dictator" before.
How brilliantly he has used his observations, introduces a new,
SPIEGEL TV documentary co-produced by suggestion in mind that this
Thursday will be premiered at the Berlinale and then shown on
television in two parts: "The Tramp and the Dictator" *. Parallel
montage, in which original Hitler parody (in the film "Hynkel" called)
occur side by side, making the transformation of the barking leader's
rhetoric in Chaplin's guttural stammer-tirade to a lesson in top
comedy, and in the encounter with Mussolini (and its Film-Double Jack
Oakie) is also exacerbated the contrast so acrobatic body that
suddenly appears even a newsreel appearance as slapstick number.
The other surprising new look at the "Great Dictator" deliver scenes
in color, which has torn the film historian Michael Kloft the oblivion
of the Chaplin family archives and assembled together with the British
experts Chaplin Kevin Brownlow on this documentation. They pursued
partly through historical imagery, partly through interviews with
witnesses and experts, the biographical points of contact between
Chaplin and Hitler and shows as a final point, healing in the ruins of
the Reich Chancellery, the great globe, the Chaplin-inspired one of
the highlights of his film.
The previously unknown color material, the sample scenes for "The
Great Dictator" documented, Sydney Chaplin has turned, the older
half-brother, himself and comedian who played as a defender and
promoter in Charlie's young people in London a central role and then
in the U.S. as a manager until the end of twenties has remained at his
side.
Beginning of 1939, Sydney, who was living in France, once again,
after visiting Hollywood, was found by Charlie without further ado
into the production team of the "Great Dictator" integrated (where
another, younger half-brother, an assistant job had been given) and
remained in the U.S. until 1952 Charlie returned to Europe as a
political refugee.
A suitcase full of colored holiday films from the estate of Sydney
Chaplin Charlie's daughter Victoria, her life is devoted else entirely
to their traveling circus, discovered years ago in the basement of his
parents' residence at Lake Geneva, where his uncle until his death in
1965, often staying for a visit and the material to the "Great
Dictator" taken by itself, without recognizing its value.
It is a rarity, not only because it is colored, but because of the
dreaded control freak and perfectionist Chaplin, who suffered as a
rule not even a photographer at the filming of "Great Dictator" in a
very special secrecy urged. The only information about the film, the
beginning he gave himself to the press in 1940, attracted even more
attention: the premiere, it was, was to take place in Berlin.
The documentary "The Tramp and the Dictator" shows both how the SA in
1931 for Chaplin's visit to Berlin against him made riot and how
pompous the other hand, the American Nazis at their party conference
in 1939 in New York's Madison Square Garden paraded no wonder that
Chaplin his project when he announced it, neither in Washington nor in
Hollywood met with great enthusiasm: they wanted as long as it went
anywhere, Hitler's push towards all eyes.
Chaplin financed the film as usual because he wanted to be purely
talking about anybody out of pocket: almost 170 days of shooting, he
could be the cost (for that time) enormous sum of two million dollars.
The shooting had on 9 September 1939 on, one week after the outbreak
of war was created, but only after the conquest of Paris in June 1940,
the naive and pathetic final speech, and this surrender of satire
against the shock of reality, the success did not detract from around
the world.
If the memory of a witness does not disappoint, coming in "The Tramp
and the Dictator" to speak, 1942, a seized in Greece "dictator" copy
in Yugoslavia has been shown in a Landserkino.
The copy in Berlin, Goebbels, who had known how to obtain course, was
twice loaned to the Reich Chancellery, but whether the cinema-seeking
leader himself has viewed the film is not known. Albert Speer was
later called him "the best documentary about the Third Reich."
