Artwork: The Great Dictator
Artist: Charlie Chaplin
About the Artwork:
It’s one of the great speeches of all time, cinematic or otherwise.
In 1940, legendary filmmaker and star of the silent era Charlie Chaplin prepared to make his transition into the realm of the ‘talkies’, with The Great Dictator, a satirical comedy about a Jewish barber who living under a parodical version of Hitler’s Nazi regime.
The film entered production a mere month after World War II broke out, but is said to have been inspired by Chaplin’s viewing of Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous Nazi propaganda film. While his peers found the movie horrifying, Chaplin found it hilarious in its utter ridiculousness. Little did he realise just what was occurring in Europe at the time.
This ignorance makes the film, especially the closing monologue delivered by the barber while he is pretending to be Hynkel the dictator, even more poignant. It was one of the very first anti-Nazi movies made in America – at the time, the country was neutral to the affairs in Europe – and came into being while Hitler’s regime had barely begun down the warpath, and yet it speaks to everything terrible that the war represented as if it were made in hindsight.
Indeed, The Great Dictator seems relevant to every great conflict that has brought about the deaths of millions over the last 76 years. It is a reminder that even the worst evil comes to an end, and that if we put aside our differences and embrace the fact that, in the end, we are all human, we have the ability to make the world a far better place than it is.
As for Chaplin, when he heard the full extent of what happened to the Jewish people who had been captured by the Nazis, he lamented making the film, and said that if he had realised what was going on, The Great Dictator never would have existed.
The similarities between Chaplin and Hitler – beyond their moustaches, they were born within four days of each other in April 1889 – haunted the filmmaker. His son, Charles Jr., writes:
“Their destinies were poles apart. One was to make millions weep, while the other was to set the whole world laughing. Dad could never think of Hitler without a shudder, half of horror, half of fascination. ‘Just think’, he would say uneasily, ‘he’s the madman, I’m the comic. But it could have been the other way around.'”