The famous one-minute speech Charlie Chaplin delivers in The Great Dictator deserves attention today. In Chaplins first sound film he plays two roles, dictator Adenoid Hynkel (an obvious satire of Adolf Hitler) and an unnamed character listed as a Jewish barber, this scene were the barber is mistaken for the dictator is really the great comic actor breaking the fourth wall, speaking as himself out of character. He released the film late in 1940, having filmed this scene on the very day Adolf Hitler toured Paris in triumph after the fall of France. Chaplin had been shooting the film for two years, starting around the time of the 1938 Anschluss, the Nazi takeover of Austria, a year before the outbreak of actual war in 1939. He was inspired to make his film after seeing the pro-Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will in 1935, and he explicitly parodied much of its cinematography, grandiose pomposity, and even lighting and idiosyncrasies. The Great Dictator is in the news lately because of comparisons with The Interview, although the latter film is extremely unlikely to be regarded as a cinematic masterpiece on par with the former. There are uncanny parallels, especially as both received direct personal involvement of the sitting president of the United States: just as Barack Obama publicly criticized Sony for withdrawing the The Interview, Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent a messenger to meet with Chaplin privately and reassure him that the White House would help fight any efforts to censor The Great Dictator or interfere with its release. Chaplin produced the film in total secrecy using his own money, in substantial part because the British government, which in 1938 was still trying to avoid offending Nazi Germany, had promised the film would likely be banned. The Nazis repeatedly described Chaplin as Jewish, which apparently even Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels believed to be true, and although Chaplin was not actually Jewish he made it a point never to publicly deny the claim. It is documented historical fact that Hitler himself watched The Great Dictator at least twice, ordering a private showing and then a reshowing a few days later. Like the dictators of North Korea, Hitler was an admirer of American film and understood its potential for political influence. Hitlers opinion of Chaplins film, unfortunately, was not recorded.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Dec 2014 14:31:06 +0000
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