The Great Dictator

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #565: Char­lie Chaplin’s The Great Dic­ta­tor.

Not Chap­lin’s great­est work, but cer­tain­ly a strong pro­pa­gan­da film. What struck me most is the igno­rance with which the prison camps and Jew­ish ghet­tos are betrayed. There are some obvi­ous instances ear­ly in the film where it seems as if Chap­lin has­n’t quite fig­ured out that he’s mak­ing a talkie, but once he gets that under con­trol the film ping-pongs back and forth between Chap­lin iconog­ra­phy and effem­i­nate Hitler-mock­ing. Chap­lin had great fun with names. Toma­nia (Ptomaine) for Alle­ma­nia and Bac­te­ria for Italia. Herrs Her­ring & Garbage, Phooey Ade­noid Hynkel and Ben­zi­no Napaloni.

Chap­lin did well to emu­late the Riefen­style of Tri­umph of the Will when Hynkel/Hitler is onstage and bal­ances it with a more rec­og­niz­ably Chap­lin style in the Ghet­to scenes, but it remains hard to watch this film and take it seri­ous­ly know­ing what we know now about Nazi atroc­i­ty. Chap­lin-style com­e­dy is well-suit­ed to mak­ing buf­foons of the Nazis, and in 1940 it still made sense to treat them as a laugh­able ene­my rather than a vicious one. Despite these dif­fi­cul­ties with hind­sight, the final speech, where a Jew­ish bar­ber inverts the mes­sage of the Dou­ble Cross par­ty, is more tri­umphant­ly inspir­ing than a thou­sand Riefen­stahl films. Yet for all its clev­er­ness, the film seems now most notable for its appalling inno­cence.

4 thoughts on “The Great Dictator”

  1. Good morn­ing Adam,

    I would be kinder to Chap­lin.

    He began film­ing of The Great Dic­ta­tor as Ger­many invad­ed Poland and was still edit­ing the final film as Ger­many waged Blitzkrieg in West­ern Europe.

    Chap­lin is said to have laughed all the way through Leni Riefenstahl’s Tri­umph of the Will (still a mas­ter­ful film for all its evil and I think of Nor­man Spin­rad’s The Iron Dream as the best retelling) in part, I believe, because the British-born Chap­lin shared a cer­tain Eng­lish atti­tude expressed by his coun­try­man Eric Arthur Blair who wrote (as George Orwell):

    Why is the goose-step not used in Eng­land? There are, heav­en knows, plen­ty of army offi­cers who would be only too glad to intro­duce some such thing. It is not used because the peo­ple in the street would laugh. Beyond a cer­tain point, mil­i­tary dis­play is only pos­si­ble in coun­tries where the com­mon peo­ple dare not laugh at the army.

    In 1939/1940 the rest of the world did not yet under­stand the full mon­stros­i­ty of the Third Reich and many, includ­ing many Jews, clung to the fan­ta­sy (as many Amer­i­cans do in 2012 when faced with the rhetoric of Willard Mitt Rom­ney and Paul Ryan on abor­tion issues — they wouldn’t real­ly imprison women who had abor­tions, would they?) that Hitler and the Nation­al Social­ist Par­ty didn’t real­ly intend to do what they said, that was just crazy talk appeal­ing to the whacko base.

    I still hold that the final speech ought to be watched again and again. Chap­lin may not have been pre­scient, but he was damn close.

    Do all you can to make today a good day,

    Jeff

  2. Thanks for the excel­lent com­ment, Jeff. I did­n’t real­ly think I was being unkind to Chap­lin, he did­n’t know — nor did any­one else — that Nazi Ger­many’s dia­bol­i­cal moral com­pass was legit­i­mate.

    I’m going to track down the Spin­rad book. Le Guin is tied for my favorite SF author with Gene Wolfe, so any­thing she feels the need to engage in at the lev­el of your link is some­thing I should read.

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