THE contents of Charlie Chaplin’s last film project, a tragicomic fantasy about a beautiful girl who sprouts wings and can fly, have been revealed for the first time.

The Freak was never made, although its script is filled with quintessential Chaplin comedy, particularly in its many chase sequences. It was to have starred his 17-year-old third daughter, Victoria, who Chaplin believed had inherited his comic gift.

He included a small part for himself as a London drunk who thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him when he sees the girl flying above him.

Chaplin began writing the script in 1968 and never lost hope of having it made, up to his death in 1977 at the age of 88. Its contents have been closely guarded by his family until now. Chaplin’s biograph- er, Jeffrey Vance, the film historian and an authority on silent-film comedy, has persuaded Victoria Chaplin to speak for the first time about both the film and her father in a new study, Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema.

She has disclosed that her mother, Oona, Chaplin’s fourth wife, tried to block the film’s production, fearing that it would harm his health. Mr Vance said: “It would have been his perfect swansong. He felt so passionate about it.”

The Freak tells the story of a girl called Sarapha, the daughter of two retired missionaries who is raised in seclusion among Fuegian Indians. She sprouts wings soon after her birth and is seen as a freak, half-bird and half-woman.

Although the story features rape, murder and the girl’s death, Mr Vance said that it was full of comic situations: “It is classic Chaplin in the sense that it blends comedy and tragedy. Sometimes the two are closely aligned. You’re definitely laughing out loud at situations he creates in the film.”

In one scene the girl turns up at a fancy-dress party after having murdered a man who tried to rape her. The guests mistake her wings for a fabulous fancy-dress costume. Mr Vance said: “You can see the whole visual situation in the script. It’s right after she’s killed a man.”

Inspiration came to Chaplin when he was sitting on the veranda of his home on Lake Geneva in Vevey watching crows pecking at his lawn. He crept up on them and, like a bird of prey, extended his arms to imitate flapping wings. The terrified creatures made their escape and Chaplin was soon putting pen to paper.

Although Sarapha’s wings were created and the main musical theme was composed, Chaplin was unable to negotiate funding. Undeterred, he resolved to finance the project himself. But his daughter, now 53, told Mr Vance: “I remember my mother telling me at Christmas in 1969, privately, ‘Well, actually, I don’t want him to do it. If he goes through the ordeal it will kill him.’ My mother felt that the special effects of the flying scenes (and) my father’s impatience for technical matters on the set would be too much for him.

“I remember my mother said, ‘I can have him alive or have him die making the film,’ and I know she believed that.”

Chaplin, whose own rags-to-riches story began with a poverty-stricken childhood in late-Victorian London, made some of cinema’s greatest classics, including The Gold Rush, Modern Times and The Great Dictator.

Mr Vance, who has written books on Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd as well as Chaplin, said: “The birth of modern comedy occurred when Chaplin donned his derby hat, affixed his toothbrush mustache and stepped into his impossibly large shoes for the first time.”

He once said of Victoria: “She has a much better comedy touch than I have and more charm.”

His faith in her talent was shattered when, at the age of 18, in 1969, she fell in love with a French actor, Jean-Baptiste Thierrée, who dreamt of a career as a clown in his own circus. The day after she was told by her mother that the film was not going to be made, she ran away to live with Thierrée in Paris. She said: “When he became mad at me for leaving home, it took some time for that anger and hurt to leave him. He was terrifying when he got mad. The whole house became electric with his anger.” She eventually married Thierrée and created a travelling circus that continues to tour Europe.

Mr Vance, who has also contributed to the Chaplin Collection of remastered DVDs of the main feature films, was given full access to the Chaplin family archives for his book. It is published as the British Film Institute has inaugurated the Chaplin Foundation, and the Manoir de Ban, Chaplin’s Swiss home for the last 25 years of his life, is being transformed into a museum for 2005.

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