Title: The Great Dictator
Rating: 4 Stars
This is the fourth Chaplin film that I’ve seen fairly recently. I’ve also seen Gold Rush, City Lights, and Modern Times. It’s interesting to watch Chaplin’s evolution over the course of these films.
Gold Rush, filmed in 1925, is the earliest. It’s a fairly simple set of scenes. It stands out because some of these set pieces are quite funny. The most famous ones include the one where, desperate for food, he eats his own shoe, and the New Year’s Eve dinner where he puts on a show of dancing bread rolls.
Next, in 1931, is City Lights. This was the first silent film that I’d seen that actually looked and acted like a feature length film. There were interesting characters. The plot, more than just a series of vignettes, built up over time. The film no longer was just a vehicle to string humorous scenes together.
Modern Times was made in 1936. With this film, Chaplin was no longer interested in just entertaining. He used the film to communicate beliefs. Rife with messages ranging from the dangers of industrialization, mechanization, poverty, and the criminalization of poverty, Chaplin was using his artistry to educate and advocate.
Now, in 1940, comes The Great Dictator. This was his first true sound film. Also, he apparently swapped out his cinematographer. If so, it really shows here. Unlike his earlier films which visually had the appearance of conventional silent films, this, even though still black and white, definitely had the visual appearance of a more modern film.
Technically, my blog title is not correct. Chaplin does not play the tramp here. In fact, he plays two roles: Hynkel, the fascist leader of a country named Tromania, and a Jewish barber.
Yeah, he’s not exactly being subtle here. Hynkel clearly is a stand-in for Hitler. He got the inspiration for the film when someone told him that his tramp character looked like Hitler. Hynkel’s closest advisors are Garbitsch (Goebbels) and Herring (Goring). His fellow and competing fascist dictator is Napaloni (Mussolini). Herring is clumsy, fat, and buffoon. Garbitsch is cold and weasels around. Napaloni is a blustery and proud braggart with a jutting chin. Hynkel, when talking to his people or when he loses his temper, yells and screams in pseudo German.
One plot thread is Hynkel’s dream of world domination. He intends to invade neighboring Osterlich, that is, unless Napaloni beats him to it first. Unfortunately, he needs a loan to finance the invasion. Despite his hatred and oppression of the Jewish people, he has to get the loan from the Jewish Banker, Epstein. Desperate for the loan, he agrees to start treating Jewish people with respect. This causes them to raise their hopes that finally they can be happy in their country. Once Epstein refuses Hynkel the loan, the Jewish reprisal is swift and furious.
Chaplin’s second character, the Jewish barber, served in WWI. At the conclusion of the war, he lost his memory and is confined to a hospital. Many years later, he manages to escape from the hospital and is shocked at how the treatment of Jewish people has deteriorated in Tromania. Resisting, he is captured and sent to a concentration camp.
Tromania invades Osterlich. Hynkel is due to make a triumphal speech in its capital. Through a case of mistaken identity, Hynkel is believed to be the barber that’s just escaped from the camp and the barber is believed to be Hynkel. Speaking as Hynkel at the capital, the barber uses the moment as a plea for world peace.
The film is actually quite funny. Despite the somewhat heavy theme, much of the comedy is slapstick that would be at home in a Three Stooges sketch. Men are hit over the head with frying pans. Chaplin falls through skylights.
Despite not being dressed like the tramp, the barber is very much a tramp-like character. He is fundamentally sweet and sincere. He looks upon the world with innocence. Paulette Goddard, just as she did in Modern Times, does luminescent work as Hannah, the barber’s love interest.
Having said all of that, it is, in hindsight, problematic. Let’s put aside the Jewish banker trope, which is a different kind of problematic in its own right. More fundamentally, the film treats Hitler as kind of a slight figure of fun. They show him lightly dreaming of world domination. Speaking perfect English and then having him lapse into flustered, nonsense German when he loses his temper makes him almost seem like a sitcom caricature (“one of these days, Alice…”). The storm troopers terrorizing the Jewish ghetto are at most one step removed from Keystone Cops. They are constantly being outwitted and reduced to sputtering rage.
This trivializes Hitler and the Nazis. In Chaplin’s defense, this is exactly what he intended. He thought of Hitler as a small, silly man and was hopeful that his film would cause other people to see him so. In 1940, people weren’t aware of how horrible the concentration camps were (not to mention the death camps to follow). In his much later autobiography, Chaplin admitted this and said that, if he’d known otherwise, that he would have never made this film.
There you have it. The Great Dictator is a very well made film that is quite funny. Historical events has relegated it to a place where it can no longer be considered one of Chaplin’s great films.
dorkenstein 