The Great Dictator in the old town square.

Pin-up Girl always knows what's going on in Lodz and invited me to an outdoor film screening. The recent heatwave has subsided somewhat and it was a little cooler as we parked Esmeralda close to the makeshift auditorium in the near deserted old town square.

We settled ourselves behind a down&out who was already slumped in oblivion, I always feel sympathy for these poor souls who have a hard time of it. The programme started with Roman Polanski's first film Two Men and a Wardrobe which he shot while a film student here in Lodz, an allegorical piece and surprisingly violent, it portrays a harsh world (he filmed it on the coast in Gdansk) devoid of benevolence or tolerance. I took the wardrobe that they haul around throughout the film to be their gay love which many are threatened by and react against. He makes a brief appearance as a very young thug (he was 25 but looks 15).

The main feature was Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, his first talkie and one I had never seen before. It was about 10pm by the time it started and we were glad we had thought to bring pullovers. We both enjoyed the film immensely, I've never laughed out loud at a Chaplin movie before, having always preferred Buster Keaton or Laurel & Hardy, but this really was quite marvellous with some wonderful sequences. Released in 1940 before the States had entered the war and the horrors of the holocaust were really known, it saturizes Hitler, Goebbels, Mussolini et al, and bitterly condemns fascism and the Nazis - referred to in the film as machine men with machine minds. Bearing in mind Britain's earlier appeasement and the US's continuing neutrality, this was an important film of the time and one which Chaplin made off his own back despite opposition from United Artists among others.

There will be more Chaplin showings every week at the same place to which all I hope to attend.