“THE GREAT DICTATOR”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 November 1940, Page 9

“THE GREAT DICTATOR”

MASTER OF PANTOMIME, TALKS ABOUT lIIS PICTURE. The world knows Charlie Chaplin—the funny, wistful little man- with large flapping shoes, a battered bowler hat. a moustache, and a cane. But when Charles Chaplin went from Hollywood to New York for the first time in ten years few people recognised him. A ruddy-faced, dapper little man. with white hair, no moustache, no bowler, small, perfectly shod feet, and alert blue eyes, he walked jauntily through the corridors of the WaldorfAstoria to meet journalists and talk with them about “The Great Dictator,” his 83rd film, which has just had its New York premiere, after being two years in production, and costing two million dollars of his own money. “The Great Dictator" is comedy, not propaganda, according to Chaplin, and 1 "making a comedy is the most lugubrious work there is,” he added. "There’s nothing duller in the world than a propaganda picture. The pros and cons of political doctrine are not entertainment.” The reason why production of “The Great Dictator” was clothed in secrecy was simply “to protect myself,” he explained. “I closed the studio and kept the story secret because 1 didn’t want to risk having someone else come out with my stuff ahead of me. That’s happened before, even in Hollywood,” he commented with a smile. Chaplin wrote his own story, his own script, and his own gags. He produced and directed the whole story •

himself, and cut and edited every foot of film. He even wrote his own music. “The Great Dictator” is Chaplin's first talkie, and there is interest in the voice of the man who has established himself as the screen’s master of pantomime and who speaks throughout the film. The Voice of Chaplin. What is Chaplin’s voice like? “To hear him speak at all is an odd experience,” wrote one interviewer. “To hear him speak in a resonant actor's voice with a clipped English accent is odder still.” To the assembled journalists Chaplin talked about his film, explained first one scene, then another, and said that he made the talkie for fun and revenge, and to be a box-office success. Marion Bussang, in the “New York Post,” quotes Chaplin as saying: “I don’t pose as a humanitarian. It is my mission, as it is the mission of the theatre itself, to exploit humour and tragedy. “Long before this war I was moved by what was going on in Europe, but not, honestly, with any thought of carrying a banner. “There was great drama there, and I felt it could be turned into something that could be felt and understood by the masses —the same masses which for generations have been feeling and understanding ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ No Revision of Script. “I took four months to write the script, and I finished it long before

war broke out. 1 didn't have to revise it at all because of the war. The 'war didn't change what 1 had to say. I was dealing with personalities and human conduct. ' “Insanity is insanity and brutality is brutality, and the people recognise it for what it is, and they don't give a hoot about the political things. "I'm not anti-anything but the persecution of the small and the weak. I’ve been playing the little man who is stepped on for 25 years—and the little man can be an individual or he can be ti minority made up Of a lot of little men. Whichever he is. his plight is great basis for drama and comedy. There is no line between the two. “Well, in this picture. 1 play a dual role. Part of the time I’m the little man and part of the time I'm a dictator. My dictator bears certain resemblances to Hitler. “It's a sort of coincidence lhat he wears a moustache like mine, but I wore it first!” “I don't ape the man. I don't wear a lock of hair over my eye. I have tried Io make a cbmposite of all dictators."