by Joseph Davis
What makes a movie resonate in the decades after its release? Sometimes, it’s because it’s a story that always grabs your attention no matter how long ago or how many times it has been told. Other times it’s because of the superb acting and directing that influences generations of actors and filmmakers afterwards. Lastly, it can be a movie that has a message that resonates across generations and feels as timely as ever. The latter case is that of a movie I wrote about for the August 7th Best Ever Challenge that I knew I would revisit, The Great Dictator: a film that premiered eighty years again on October 15, 1940 in New York City. While I gave a brief overview of the film for the challenge, this movie has stuck with me ever since as it feels more timely than any film I have seen in recent years.
Timing is everything, especially in filmmaking, where the day of a film’s release can mean the difference between a blockbuster or a disappointment. It can also mean the difference on what film you make and the message you want to convey to the audience. This plays out in multiple ways for Charlie Chaplin in this movie he wrote, directed, produced and starred in. The main thing that shaped this movie, outside of an advance in technology, was global events. The world was recovering from The Great Depression, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were marching across Europe, and many of Europe’s Jews were frantic to escape persecution. These events, while portrayed as a comedy, clearly shaped the message Charlie has to say.
As for the film itself, they say that imitation is the greatest form of flattery. In this case, it may be better to describe imitation as the greatest form of mockery.
From the beginning of the movie, with Chaplin portraying a Tomanian soldier in the First World War, to his portrayal as the Phooey Hynkel, Chaplin and his cast do a phenomenal job of mocking Adolph Hitler with how he dressed and how he acted. his advisors Joseph Goebels (with Henry Daniel playing the conniving Garbitsch) and Hermann Göring (Billy Gilbert as the inept Herring) and the German Reich as a whole. Not only this, but it also mocks Hitler’s relationship with Benito Mussolini and Fascist Italy through the movie, as the dictator of the nation of Bacteria, Benzio Napolini (Jack Oakie), appears as not only Hynkel’s ally but also his greatest adversary, as both have plans for the neighboring country of Osterlich. In many ways, while this movie is first and foremost a comedy, it does an excellent job showing what life was like in Germany when the Nazis rose to power, with the persecution of those that the party deemed to be unfit to their ideals. Of course, at the time this movie was released no one outside of the perpetrators and the victims of the Holocaust knew the true scope of the horrors unveiling inside occupied Europe, a fact that even Chaplin himself said would have stopped the movie from being made if he had known.
One other aspect of this movie is that it not only serves as a stark rebuke to the rise of Nationalist and Fascist ideals, but also serves as a wonderful insight to the evolution of cinema as we know it. By and large Charlie Chaplin is remembered today as a silent film actor where he and many others began their careers, but by the time this movie released so called “talkies” were by and large the kings of the cinema landscape (for example, while the first Academy Award winner for best picture, Wings, was a silent film, it would take decades before another silent movie would earn the honor). This evolution of filmmaking is evident in this film, as while the actors and actresses in this film deliver wonderful performances worthy of modern cinema (with the likes of Reginald Gardner, Maurice Mosovich and Paulette Goddard portraying iconic characters in their own right), many of the antics in this film from fighting the First World War to the Barber and Schultz attempting to escape the ghetto are heavily influenced by Chaplin’s experience in the silent era. This extends to the life of Hynkel as well, where many antics by Herring and his even more inept inventors, Garbitsch and his attempts to one up Napolini, and even the famous scene as Hynkel dreams of world domination feel straight from Chaplin’s early works. While this leads to hilarious antics, it feels as if Chaplin is finding his footing in the new form of film media, as he tries to create a place for himself in the world of sound, while also allowing for The Tramp to share a message that he clearly feels passionately about.
As this movie reaches its climactic conclusion, it feels as if Chaplin steps out of his character to deliver a message to a world at war using the most powerful weapon the silent film actor, and any person, has: his voice. By this point, the Barber and Hynkel have, unknown to everyone but Schultz (Gardner), traded places due to a mixup of identities, with the Barber having to perform a speech in the now occupied Osterlich as Hynkel. Almost immediately you feel as if the moment has grown beyond the characters and into the real world, as the Barber has misgivings on giving the final speech with his friend urging him to do so as no one else can. In this moment, it feels as if Chaplin is having an internal argument with himself, knowing before he stands that the next few moments will irrevocably change the trajectory of his career. As he begins his final bombastic speech, and you feel the rise in emotion that it triggers, it becomes all too clear that Chaplin is not portraying the Barber anymore, but instead has now stepped in front of the camera as himself, speaking directly to the audience watching the movie to implore that they fight for liberty while condemning not only the demagogues he had spent the past two hours mocking, but also people who preach liberty yet practice oppression. While it is clear he was speaking to the world of 1940 and the people living in a world shaped by the war against Nazi Germany and Facsist Italy in Europe, even now eighty years after its release when we live in a world besieged by a pandemic, where people have taken to the streets to protest racial inequality and the unjust deaths of Black men and women at the hands of an increasingly militaristic police, and with political discourse comprised mainly of people dictating policy by tweet, hurling insults at their opponents, and believing that the only correct answer is theirs and all others are wrong, and implores the world to unite in a way that advances all mankind, Black or white, Jew or gentile, towards a world where everyone can live happy and free. As the movie ends, as we return to Paulette Goddard’s character, it feels as if she herself is looking into the future, towards a world of peace and unity. It is a moment that, no matter how many times I watch it, has the power to send chills down my spine even thinking about it.
At the time this film was released, there was controversy in the United States on the final message of the film. As this was the first time The Tramp had come out and shared his personal beliefs on the silver screen, which started a trend in his film career, it triggered a downward trend in his popularity in America that eventually lead to an effective exile from the United States from 1952 (upon the release of his film Limelight) until 1972, where he would return to receive an Honorary Academy Award at the 44th Oscars, an event where he received a well deserved and much belated twelve minute standing ovation, a record that stands to this day. While I’m personally disappointed that this movie did not get the response at the time it deserved, with views on Chaplin’s message often felt in the present day when actors and athletes speak out, I firmly believe that the message at the end of this film is as timely now as it was in 1940. Much like when this film was released, we are at the crossroads of history. I also firmly believe that, much like Chaplin called for then, humanity needs to strive to create a world not driven by hate, where people try to promote their own interests to the detriment of others, but instead to unite, to discuss our thoughts on matters and our disagreements to come to a solution that helps us all, and to make a world that is better for all of us, regardless of our differences. Much like Chaplin states that planes and the radio had brought the world closer together, we as a species have devices that allow us to communicate with anyone in the world, but when we should use them to unite humanity these devices have been used to divide us. This was a message Chaplin promoted with this movie, a message for unity, of hope for those without hope, that has stood against the test of time and those who wanted to prevent it from spreading, to a generation that sorely needs to know that there is still hope in this world, but that we must work together to achieve it for all of us.