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The Great Dictator

7/18/2016

16 Comments

 

C+
2.43

In the 1940's, a buffoonish dictator and a harmless Jewish barber look eerily alike.

Directed by Charlie Chaplin
Starring Charlie Chaplin and Jack Oakie
​Initial Review by Joe Setnor

Picture
Charlie Chaplin's first foray into full-sound movie making, proved to show his brilliance as a complete artist, and one who was well ahead of his time. In the film The Great Dictator, we watch and hear Chaplin weave a beautiful satire built around the political climate of Europe in the 1930s. Chaplin writes, directs, produces, and also stars in two roles for the film. One role, clearly a spoof of Adolf Hitler, is Adenoid Hynkel. The other is the Jewish Barber, who awakes from a 20 or so year coma following an injury in the Great War. Chaplin is surrounded by a host of others that do a fine job, but it's Chaplin who clearly shines the brightest.

Chaplin's Hynkel, is a dictator bent on taking over the world. Surrounded by buffoonish advisors, Hynkel, in the same vein as Hitler, attacks, and restricts the rights of Jews. We see Jews persecuted by stormtroopers, their businesses branded “Jew,” and of course the forced living in ghettos designed to keep them out of society. There is no subtlety, here. Chaplin tackles the policies of the Third Reich and Fascist Italy head on. And it's brilliance as a satire piece can still be appreciated 75+ years later.

For starters, Chaplin made a bold decision to apply his slapstick style he honed in years of silent film making, to the characters in The Great Dictator. It's a decision that could easily have backfired, since the subject matter was off such a serious nature. But Chaplin pulls it off by crafting scenes that portray real human emotion. In one scene, we see the powerful, but at times painfully awkward Hynkel, gracefully dance with a balloon in the shape of a globe. The scene is a throwback to Chaplin's silent film days, as there is no dialogue occurring, only dancing and music. By the end of the scene, you understand that Hynkel only has love for just his own desires of total world domination. However, it's pretty clear that his desires may very well destroy the thing he loves so much.

The other dramatic scene is the crescendo of the film, and appropriately carried out through the medium of an awe-inspiring speech. Delivered by the Jewish Barber (Chaplin himself is not Jewish), his words are eloquent, appealing, and moving. It’s appropriate to see the film peak this way because of how it contrasts Hitler's style of maniacal rambling at the podium. While both Hitler and the Jewish Barber are impassioned in the moment, we only see humanity in the Barber. Hitler's anger demonstrative appeals prompted fear and aggression, while the Barber inspires those listening to open their eyes and embrace the humanity around them.

The real life impact of the film is impossible to define, but it does set the stage for American political debate for the following two years as America officially remained neutral to the affairs of Europe. Again, this showed the brilliance of Chaplin, as he had understood the severity of the issues going on. But it's impact is also felt in the arts, as Chaplin was able to really exhibit the effectiveness of intelligently driven satire. Satire remains, today, a vital aspect of the arts and entertainment industry. It's perhaps the most useful medium to represent disdain in political figures and decisions. For modern influence, look no further than HBO's widely successful Veep, or to The Onion, which is now valued at more than the Washington Post.

Chaplin’s brilliance cannot be overstated in The Great Dictator. The film represents not just a very public “fuck you!” to the Third Reich, but it also lays the foundation for Hollywood to recognize and understand the power that can be found in film.

Grade: A+
16 Comments
Admin
7/19/2016 12:22:23 am

Replies to initial review.

Reply
Bryan
7/19/2016 12:23:58 am

It sounds more like you're giving the satire genre an A+ and the film just happens to be an early form of satire.

Reply
Joe link
7/19/2016 12:29:55 am

Not at all. This movie was made in 1940, piratically at the pinnacle of the Third Reich. It was a brave approach that didn't pull any punches in confronting of the most dangerous people alive.

Satire is very hard to do. Chaplin nailed it.

Jon
7/22/2016 01:49:36 am

I very much left this movie thinking that anything involving Jews in Nazi-occupied territory is unsatirizable. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though I wonder if even someone like Mel Brooks would get anywhere near it.

Reply
Bryan
7/19/2016 12:27:10 am

Remember when fake Hitler walked into the portrait room repeatedly for a second each time and his artists weren't working, then he tripped over the painting of the Nazi logo on the floor. I'll let you all talk me up on this film, but I don't get it.

It's not chuckle-worthy in the slightest and I have a hard time giving kudos for being first if the movie is nearly impossible to sit through.

F. For now.

Reply
[email protected] link
7/19/2016 12:37:27 am

Consider the era. The movie debuted in 1940, with one of its goals to insult and make a buffoon of Hitler.

You are free to agree to disagree with me on the comedic level of the movie, and that's fine. I get that. But, to offer an F I think refusing to look at the film in the appropriate context of the surrounding elements. The film tackled anti-Semitism head on, and without apologies. That's groundbreaking.

Reply
Bryan
7/19/2016 12:48:03 am

I don't think it made Hitler look like a baffoon. He shoots a guy and lambasts the guy with terrible uniform ideas.

The best satire exaggerates people to the point of cringeworthy and plays up what people already know of the character. I could be missing those things here knowing so little of the world wars.

Bryan
7/20/2016 01:54:27 pm

Hey Joe. I'm now up to D-.

Crickets around here, eh?

Reply
Lane
7/20/2016 07:24:56 pm

It’s hard for us in the 21st century to think that people in 1940 might have been ambivalent to, or even supported, Hitler, but there were some. Our current Republican nominee’s campaign theme of “America First” is unfortunately reminiscent of the “America First Committee” which advocated for the U.S. to stay out of war with Germany. The AFC was organized out of Yale (a-holes) in 1940…same year as “The Great Dictator.”

It’s an analytical exercise for us to think about the risks that Chaplin took in making this movie. I know about them only because I took a film class in college…however, the acting remains extraordinary even if the film is difficult to judge since the sensibilities of film in 1940 are just so different than anything more modern.

I feel like I inflated my grade for “A Trip to the Moon,” and so I’m going to deflate my grade for this to help balance it out.

Grade is a B+ for Chaplin’s performance, but no doubt it deserves to be in the history books.

Reply
Bryan
7/20/2016 08:45:32 pm

Good call with comparison to A Trip to the Moon. However, Moon's absurdities are still amusing to me. Dictator's don't resonate.

Reply
Jon
7/22/2016 01:38:30 am

In a recent episode of the Filmspotting podcast, which I've been listening to for years, they were doing a Top 5 Film Rivalries. In between discussions of No Country For Old Men vs. There Will Be Blood and which great 70's film critic the hosts preferred, they talked about Charlie Chaplin vs. Buster Keaton, both huge comedic stars of the silent era. The hosts professed admiration for both, and described the former as the 'pop' choice and the latter as the 'cool' choice, like preferring Pulp Fiction to Forrest Gump. That comparison was ringing through my head while I was watching Chaplin's very broad The Great Dictator. Plainly pitched towards the widest possible audience, meaning it's a four-quadrant film about satirizing Hitler, Chaplin's film was a significant failure for me. Chalk that up to my cinematic hipster tendencies if you wish, but nonetheless, I felt far more annoyance than admiration with this film.

A big chunk of that annoyance was with the humor. I definitely wouldn't say that I don't like this kind of silent era big humor. When I watched a documentary series last winter called The Story of Film, several clips involving Keaton got legitimate, surprised laughs out of me. Chaplin's certainly a talented physical comedian, but his shtick is pretty tired 70 years later after being copied and spoofed so many times. A lot of The Great Dictator felt like a Three Stooges routine, and not a good one either, a frustrating comment as Chaplin may very well have inspired their act. Scenes repeat themselves for no reason other than so Chaplin can do a routine that doesn't land and just wastes time. I think it was Phil that said that no comedy should be longer than two hours, and the rule applies here. There's the Benny Hill-style sped up scenes, slapstick, funny accents, and more choices that did not work. I just didn't find myself laughing, ever.

If the film personally fails as a comedy, that's going to be a huge blow against it, but what drives The Great Dictator even lower is the tone and premise. Joe praised the balls it took for Chaplin to make this film, and the forward-thinking required to satirize one of the most powerful men in the world at the peak of his career. I'm less impressed. There've been satirists forever, with far higher stakes in their work that what Chaplin did. Directors were making anti-Nazi films and satire in Germany before and during the Nazi regime. Chaplin's doing his work in California, so all that's at stake for him is money.

It's not like Hitler wasn't, and isn't, ripe for parody. The Downfall meme has done a fantastic job of this. Someone so outlandish in thought and deed begs to be taken down by cleverer satirists than Chaplin, who keeps reverting to 'what if Hitler fell down' and 'German's a weird language, isn't it.' His most frustrating choice is to want to have it both ways. He wants to take the piss out of dictators, but he also wants to tug on the heartstrings with the ghetto side of the film. The enemy of satire is earnestness. It's why late night hosts like Jon Stewart or Samantha Bee occasionally open their shows with a quick dose of sincerity after a tragedy and then get into what they do after; clear delineations between them being serious and what they're most skilled at, with the seriousness being dispatched with quickly and never returning for the rest of the show.

Reply
Jon
7/22/2016 01:39:16 am

Chaplin has said that if he knew about what Jews were actually facing under the Third Reich, he would never have made this film. I think he still could've easily made the Hynkel parts, but he's right to be wary about the barber section. I find it hard to believe he still went through with it after Kristellnacht. It's a plea from ignorance on Chaplin's part, but I'm not ignorant now and nor are we. There wasn't reprieve in the ghettos, and stormtroopers didn't meet their match in a cast iron pan. The Great Dictator, albeit incidentally, trivializes the unfeeling brutality that the victims of the Nazis encountered, and it can only leave a sour taste in one's mouth. We talked about being unable to truly imagine what it must have been like to see A Trip to the Moon for the first time. The stakes are so much higher here because this is about an actual historical tragedy.

If the barber section led to something worthwhile, I'd be more forgiving. Instead, it leads to a cloying, sentimental pieces of claptrap that doesn't even work in the context of the film. When did the barber get so poised and eloquent, that he would be able to deliver that speech? It felt like Chaplin started with that, and worked backwards, thinking, "If only the people of the world hear my beautiful words, everything will be better." That's a liberal trope that bugs me, that people that don't subscribe to progressive causes simply haven't heard the right argument yet, like some magical arrangement of words will break them out of their authoritarian, regressive stupor and they'll wake up in the morning and trade in their F-150's for Priuses and laugh at their former stupidity as they silently drive by their former church. That the speech is so warmly received by the assembled soldiers, and that the movie ends after the speech, is insulting to the at-the-time recent history of the 1930's and the general intelligence of viewer in perpetuity. Oh, if only the Wehrmacht or the SS was encouraged to be their better selves, all this might not have happened.

As the 'crowning achievement' of the film, the speech itself has its moments but I can, uh, imagine John Lennon watching the Great Dictator and being inspired to pen his own ode to dreamy, utopian nonsense. There's just so many things in it that irk me. The nobility of the oppressed, anti-technology sentiment, the Romantic subtext in an unromantic time, a wealthy and famous man arguing for pacifism and no walls; it's all just melodrama. WWI was a few decades in the rearview and Chaplin's going to call the natural state of man loving? How much counter-evidence does one need until this bullshit gets a final layer of dirt put on top of it? Also, would a Jew really quote from the Gospel of Luke?

The hell of it is that The Great Dictator is a good-looking film with at least one great scene in it. I loved the image of Hynkel bouncing the globe-as-beachball, a balletic tour de force that struck me as inspired. Chaplin's loaded with charisma and for as much as I didn't like the ending, he delivers it with obvious passion. However, I ultimately cannot get over how toothless the whole affair is. I imagine the cast and crew back-slapping each other after a scene, imagining how frustrated Hitler will be when he sees how they stuck it to him. Instead, Hitler is rumored to have watched this film twice. He was able to laugh at himself, and still do what he did, probably with a smile on his face of equal size. Satire is a vital force that brings those who would elevate themselves above the rigors of humanity down to eye level, but it is also a limited power. Chaplin forgets those limits and tries to have his cake and eat it, too. I'd like to give it a pass due to the main performance and that bouncing globe, but I'm too agitated by too many parts of it to go higher than a D+.

Reply
Lane
7/22/2016 09:47:43 pm

A Jon K. D+ is one of the more damning film indictments you can receive.

Here’s my thing…can we really judge what Chaplin was doing in 1940 by 2016 sensibilities? Can we even judge 1940 filmmaking? What hasn’t been talked about (I didn’t mention it in my original review, so my bad) is that this was Chaplin’s last-gasp film; his career was dead and gone by the 1930’s and for him to come back and make this in 1940…when “talkies” were the norm…was pretty damn monumental. The problem we face is the same that our future MMC progeny will face some seventy years from now. How do you compare films from different eras? For us, a film from 1990 contains a significant aesthetic/technological difference than a film from 2016. The same was true for Chaplin’s audience, who knew his silent film history but had written him off in the age of sound.

This is why these types of film are impossible for me to accurately judge…if you’re still being talked about in film classes in 2016 (which “The Great Dictator” definitely is), don’t you deserve at least a passing grade? Should we, as modern audiences, admit we’re not really able to compare movies from different era’s?

Reply
Jon
7/23/2016 12:05:35 am

It's definitely hard to judge a film decades after its release, especially when the process of how movies get made is so different. I don't deny that, even with all the censorship issues of the 40's and the restrictions of the time, this is a well-made film, for any era. If it comes up in directing for the Mediocrities, I won't be too agitated, but for writing, I would be frustrated.

Reply
Drew
7/23/2016 08:51:19 pm

This was a serving of political and social satire with slice of reality for an unsettling dessert. Maybe if one was up to date on current events, she/he could find the political parallels of then and today, especially seeing Donald Trump as Chaplin's Hynkel. But if one was not, then she can see the Hitler comparisons and a lot of slap - stick comedy.

There some laugh out loud moments for those who love slap - stick comedy. The hitting of the heads with a pan, the opening scene, and the handshake exchange between Hynkel and Napaloni were funny parts. The part that made me laugh the most was the globe scene. Its overall dynamic and execution was something memorable.

Despite those positive things, the end speech was out of place. This satirical film tried having a moral to its story but fell flat. As Jon stated, Chaplin cannot have it both ways.

Funny and re-watchable movie but its big finale left much to want.

Grade: C

Reply
Cooker
7/26/2016 03:35:48 pm

I scrolled through my previous rankings because I couldn’t decide what to give this. I stumbled upon the C- I gave Annie Hall and thought, you know, I appreciate everything that went into this film, but for some reason I could not get interested in it.

Nothing against Charlie Chaplin’s voice, but I prefer his silent-era films better. When I sat through the opening war sequences, it felt very Three Stooges-ish to me. I like their 20-minutes shorts, but when I saw that this movie was over two hours, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to tolerate it. Luckily, it wasn’t all slapstick jibbery joo. However, I thought the globe scene was never going to end.

I liked the use of having the lead play the dual roles. I honestly don’t know what else to talk about. I couldn’t get invested in this one. Maybe my office was too hot and I couldn’t stay focused. C-

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