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Ed Sullivan, Daily News, New York, October 17, 1940.

Ed Sullivan

(...) Photo, Boston Globe, Boston, Mass., Oct. 16, 1940

& 7 mai 1945 – Deux jeunes femmes, debout

la rue Sainte-Catherine à Montréal, lisent la une du journal

The Montreal Daily Star. Ce titre annonce la capitulation

allemande et la fin imminente de la Deuxiième Guerre mondial, Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec

„Said only the usual things and they fell flat“

Editorial content. „Little Old

      NEW YORK
      By ED SULLIVAN

      The Chaplin Picture

      Early in the present war, the newsreels showed

a picture of a bombing attack and the cameras

panned to a closeup of a child who had been killed, and in her

arms was a doll whose sawdust packing had been

jarred loose by the concussion of the bomb‘s explosion . . .

That was propaganda of the most deliberately

effective sort, and every picture that has come out of Hollywood

with a propaganda message has had to bear comparison

with that newsreel shot . . . It is not surprising that all of them

have fallen short; not surprising either that Charlie

Chaplin‘s The Great Dictator has been judged inadequate

by the New York critics.“ (...)

      „All but one of the reviewers, the Times, expressed

disappointment in Chaplin, the propagandist, while

becoming lyrical in their praise of Chaplin, the comic . . . The

Times‘ Bosley Crowther liked it first-rate, while noting

debits . . . What seemed to throw it offkey for the majority was

Chaplin‘s last speech to the audience, in which

he expressed himself on such related themes as liberty and

greed . . . This was a series of cliches . . . Perhaps

if Chaplin had asked a Monsignor Fulton Shean to sum up for

him, prepare a brilliant summation, this would not have

been offkey . . .  What was needed here was a magnificent

mind as a constructionist . . . Chaplin, the clown said

only the usual things and they fell flat.“

      The Great Dictator world premiere is in New York Oct. 15, 1940

      at the Capitol and Astor Theatres.

      Capitol Theatre, 1645 Broadway (at 51st Street), New York. 

      Astor Theatre, 1531 Broadway (at 45th Street), New York.

    

Redaktioneller Inhalt

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