312 Part III: Emigration Years
life must be included the close contacts with the other German émigrés
as well as Hollywood society, of which Adorno had a somewhat ironic
view: ‘Usually these blithe spirits are as totally absorbed by everyday
practicalities as the petty bourgeoisie. They furnish houses, prepare
parties, show virtuosity in booking hotel and airline reservations.’^185
Naturally enough, Adorno wrote to his parents right away to tell them
about his impressions of his first encounter with Charlie Chaplin. He
thought his 1947 film Monsieur Verdoux was a masterpiece.^186 Adorno
and his wife were invited by Chaplin to a private showing of the film.
After the dinner that followed, Adorno played the piano – a melange
of music from operas by Verdi, Wagner and Mozart – while Chaplin
accompanied his playing with parodistic enactments. This and other
meetings with Chaplin were engraved indelibly on Adorno’s memory.
An instance occurred in a villa in Malibu at which the actor Harold
Russell was also present. He had played the part of a wounded American
veteran in the award-winning film The Best Years of our Life.
One of the guests came to say goodbye early while Chaplin was
standing next to me. Unlike Chaplin, I extended my hand a little
absent-mindedly and then jerked it back violently. The man say-
ing goodbye was one of the main actors in the film The Best Years
of our Life, a film that had become famous after the war. He had
lost one of his hands in the war and wore an artificial claw made
of iron, but very effective. When I shook his right hand and it
responded to the pressure, I was very taken aback, but realizing
at once that I should not let Russell see my reaction under any
circumstances, I instantly transformed the shocked expression on
my face into a winning grimace which must have looked even
more shocking. Scarcely had the actor departed than Chaplin was
already mimicking the scene. So close to horror is the laughter
that he provoked and only from close up can it acquire its legitimacy
and its salutary aspect.^187It was not only Chaplin’s films that Adorno enjoyed. Thanks to his
personal contacts with directors, authors, scriptwriters, actors and pro-
ducers, he was familiar with the Hollywood productions of those years.
No doubt because of his friendship with Fritz Lang and his partner Lily
Latté, he would have seen such films as Fury, You and Me, and presum-
ably also Jesse James. His friendship with Alexander Granach, who had
died in March 1945, meant that he saw the films Granach had acted
in, including, for example, Hangmen Also Die!, but also other anti-Nazi
films in which people he knew well were involved. As a critic of the
culture industry, however, he thought it impossible for the horrors
of fascism to be depicted in the cinema, since ‘total unfreedom can be
recognized, but not depicted’.^188 He ridiculed well-intentioned attempts
to transmit correct political opinions through the medium of film. In