Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler had more in common than a small moustache: both men were born in the same week of the same month of the same year (april 1889) and they both endured a tough childhood. Both men became artists - Chaplin an actor and Hitler a painter. Just few years before Chaplin shot to fame as The Tramp, Hitler had actually been down and out in Vienna - until he found refuge at a home for men supported by a Jewish charitable organisation. "Both mirrored the same reality - the deprivation of the 'little man' in modern society. Both are travesties, the one for good, the other for unspeakable evil." This was written in "The Spectator" in April 1939, on the occasion of both their fifhties birthdays. But there is something and interesting more in this documentary: Viktoria Chaplin has found in a suitcase from her uncle Sydney 16mm filmstrips: Chaplin's brother had photographed the shooting of the masterpiece The Great Dictator, with his amateur camera in full color. An extraordinary document shown for the first time at the 52° Internationale Filmfestspiele of Berlin. |
