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The Italians love clowns, and have always had their own cinematic breed of capering fool. A hundred years ago, when Chaplin ruled the earth, comics like Cretinetti, Polidor and Arthème held their own in Europe.Early Chaplin looks pretty crude compared to late Chaplin. The French and Italians, with the elegant exception of the great Max Linder, are kind of crude by any standards. But worth seeing: these comics are vigorous, rambunctuous and inventive. They're even, sometimes, funny. But that's not the main attraction to me. The past isn't another country. It's another planet. Cinema is a space and time machine that gives us glimpses of distant worlds, impossible to reach by other means.These buffoons had their heyday before the great war, but lingered on in spectral form afterwards. Polidor was remembered by Fellini and cast in Toby Dammit as an old actor receiving an award. Cretinetti (real name...