Adolf Hitler called – he said he has an oven with your name on it…

The Agitprop that Dares Speaketh.

Charlie Chaplin‘s first talkie. For years, he resisted synchronized sound in his films, thinking it would destroy his career. Maybe he was right, considering he only made a few more movies after THE GREAT DICTATOR; maybe it was self-fulfilling prophecy, or maybe it was a combination of changing times and aging man. No matter, as nothing he did could ever destroy his legacy.

THE GREAT DICTATOR is Chaplin’s audacious satirical stab at Hitler’s Nazi regime, production starting just as World War II broke out. Obviously before the term “too soon” was invented. (Amazing how Chaplin had the opportunity to satirize both World Wars as they were happening! SHOULDER ARMS was his great jab at WWI idiocy.)

Story follows a Jewish Barber (Chaplin) blundering through his battles as a soldier for the fictional country of Tomainia during WWI. He unsuccessfully tries to save Officer Schultz (Reginald Gardiner) from a plane crash. Both survive the crash but the Barber loses his memory. Years later, he returns home, unaware of the suffocating new social climate where stormtroopers persecute Jews in the name of the dictator of Tomainia, Adenoid Hynckel (also played by Chaplin). Schultz discovers the Barber in the Jewish ghetto and in gratitude for his help in the plane, saves the Barber from the stormtroopers.

The Barber happens to look exactly like the dictator Hynckel, so Schultz (who has been hatching a scheme to overthrow Hynckel) plots to use the Barber as Hynckel’s stand-in to infiltrate the dictatorship. Nothing goes as planned, until the Barber somehow ends up on a stage at a giant rally, dressed as Hynckel, with the opportunity to broadcast to the world. In the film’s climactic scene, the Barber gives a rousing speech that decries dictatorships and calls for humanity to embrace science and progress. Which is either the film’s grandest moment or its sourest note. Because the speech is not delivered by dictator Hynckel or plebian Barber, but by politico Chaplin, as he breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the camera, to we the audience. Some see it as a political punch to the sternum, while others see it as a shark jump destabilizing the film’s tone. As epochs pass and trends shift, it will morph back and forth for better or worse.

The first thing we notice about the THE GREAT DICTATOR is that it’s not all that funny. I said it. Because we can hear Charlie talking. And we’re not used to that. And neither is Charlie. It’s a long road to Groucho Marx.

Audiences of his day might have roared with laughter at Chaplin’s primordial verbal humor (and a few zingers admittedly sneak through), but Chaplin, having cut his teeth on silent cinema, is the king of physical comedy, with his pioneering inventiveness and shark-tooth execution. This movie slams home how uncomfortable he is with verbal comedy, as he lacks the knack for framing and delivering verbal jokes. The best “verbal” jokes are Hynckel’s gibberish German, sometimes cheekily translated by a narrator, oft-times containing way too many “sauerkrauts” and “da chudens” for comfort. But no matter the amount of throwaway dialogue, the funniest parts in the film are when Chaplin is not talking; like the coin-in-the-pudding to choose a “volunteer,” or the dark metaphor in the visual of Hitler Dancing With Globe (to Wagner’s Lohengrin, Prelude to Act I). Silence will always be Chaplin’s forte.

It is hard to watch the legend Chaplin floundering in the writing and delivering of this new-fangled “dialogue,” trying to make it humorous and dark, and mostly failing. It’s a long road to Tarantino…

Or maybe he succeeded. For THE GREAT DICTATOR was a smash.

The film is ahead of its time and a product of its time. Its place in history is bigger than we can grasp; it is poking fun at THE scourge of the 20th century, Adolf Hitler, while he was still alive, just as WWII broke out, and before Hitler’s Nazi atrocities were revealed. (Chaplin said that if he had known about the atrocities, he would not have made such light of the regime. It’s the point I make myself in HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY (2008) – a harrowing current event that has caused too much worldwide pain to be appropriate as a comedy.)

Angelic Paulette Goddard (Chaplin’s third wife) is the Barber’s innocent love interest, Hannah, a cutie pie that allies with the Barber in his quest to bring down The Man. At times, her dialogue would also wax preachy, as when she turns almost to camera and says, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they stop bothering us?”

Much like the first Marvel Comics issue of Captain America sees Cap giving Hitler a Sweet American Right Hook, DICTATOR is quite an obvious, unsubtle jab (both the comic and movie were released in the same month, March 1941): Tomainia’s symbol is the double cross (which looks like a swastika if you squint real hard); there are giant rallies, the German-styled uniforms, all Hynckel’s fellow dictators and compatriots are blatant sendups of political figures, stormtroopers (the actual scary kind, not the laughable Imperial minions of Darth Slapstickus) do the dictator’s perverse bidding, and – who can mistake that face-do! And what are the odds that the only other man on Earth who sported that “Hitler mustache” would actually end up spoofing Hitler? (In the film CHAPLIN (1992), Kevin Kline would jest about Hitler to Chaplin: “He stole your act – and your mustache!”)

How did the Führer react to this uppercut of British propaganda? He was too busy laughing at Groucho Marx in THE BIG STORE.

END

Machinery… because The Future!

The Future Back Then.

Little Tramp meets Little Trampette, and all Industrial Revolution breaks loose!

It’s MODERN TIMES in 1936! The machines are taking over; industrialization is cutting jobs, and those jobs that remain are repetitive, drudgerous tasks that drive men batty. Such is the case with the Little Tramp (Charlie Chaplin), whom we meet working a “modern” assembly line.

Through a series of adventures, that finds Little Tramp joining forces with a street urchin and trying to hold various jobs, the story wends its way through further scenarios fueled by the economy shifting to favor mechanized labor.

Of course, the flavor and funny of any Chaplin movie is not based on its meager plot, but on the inventiveness of the pioneering sight gags Chaplin wrote and directed for himself. In MODERN TIMES, we are treated to the assembly line gags (with Chaplin pulling off clockwork timing), the feeding machine (a commentary on the hubris of corporate thinking), the cog machine (which seems to do nothing except be a machine for cogs); there are the jail gags, the blindfolded skating near the edge of a precipice, the waiter gags, and then the feature of Charlie Chaplin himself warbling a nonsensical song in synchronized sound!

There is even a surprising advocacy for being in jail! When life on the streets and in a factory prove too hard for Little Tramp, he makes a nice space for himself in jail, wishing to return to its comfort when he is ejected, for its relative consistency in times of famine.

Out in the hungry streets, Paulette Goddard, proving there are angels. She plays a “Gamin” (a street urchin), stealing food for her destitute father and sisters. Chaplin’s real life girlfriend at the time, Goddard is so innocently delectable – skin like stretched silk, innocence unleashed, sparkling bright eyes – one can see where the myths of unfathomably exquisite heavenly creatures might have originated. Her father is murdered in a street shooting, and when she desperately steals a loaf of bread, Little Tramp saves her from the law. At one point, we see a closeup of a police report, showing a picture of Goddard looking delectably street-dirty, with a policeman writing “Wanted for vag–” Wanted for vag?! Oh god, yes! Mainly by me– oh, sorry, he’s writing “Wanted for vagrancy”…

It’s MODERN TIMES in the world of silent cinema too: while the rest of the industry had turned to synchronized sound in film, Chaplin staunchly refused, and this movie would in fact be his last technically “silent” film. “Technically” because it is a mixture of title cards denoting dialogue, people overacting silently speaking while a soundtrack jangles under them, and synchronized sound in certain sequences – the boss of the factory, a dog barking, some sound effects, and of course, Chaplin singing. It was regarded widely as an “almost-silent” film.

The title is more about the tenor of the times (unemployment, leading to crime and disenfranchisement) than mechanization replacing human labor, although that seems to be one of the reasons for the high unemployment. There are two scenes that involve factories where giant cog wheels represent “modernization” (and probably “futurism” as well). An alternate title was THE MASSES, and the opening shot of factory workers being compared to sheep was a cutting commentary; it’s a passé dig now, but back then, it was a new concept.

Through the hard times of modern times, Chaplin’s message seems to be that love will see you through, as Little Tramp and Gamin secure a shack together, find a job together, and eventually get kicked out of town together, with Chaplin’s last title card being “Buck up – never say die! We’ll get along.” But the “romance” is played so innocently – it is made absolutely clear that they never share a bed, a kiss or even a dirty thought – that it robs their relationship of poignancy. It’s like watching Just Friends discuss recipes. Who cares? With Smile (Though Your Heart Is Breaking) on a loop, we want to see these two as an item, we want some indication theirs is a mature adult relationship, rather than the gutless go-nowhere censorship version of couplehood. But they walk off into the sunset arm in arm like brother and sister. Just goes to show that not everything is modern about the times…

END