The Great Dictator (1940)

[Plain Old Tele]

Discuss.

[Brainbug]

Saw it yesterday again as part of my revisit of the Chaplin Movies.

 

The Great Dictator is a great () movie period and especially interesting considering the time it came out. In the year of 1940, World War 2 was escalating faster and faster and for a filmmaker to make a parody of the fascist dictators in Europe was a very risky thing. The film mainly satirizes the events of 1935-1938 in Germany, giving real people and places fake (and funny) titels and making fun of Hitlers way of speaking. As a german myself, the speech scenes stand along the best comedic scenes of all time imo. The constant gibberish mixed with actual german cliche words like Sauerkraut are just comedy gold.

But the movie is so much more than just a very good comedy. It is an emotional, heartfelt message for democracy, freedom and peace. Everyone knows the timeless speech at the end of the movie (in my eyes Chaplins best scene) but the whole movie raises the finger, showing, albeit in a comedic way, how dangerous and unjust life is in a totalitarian system. We always know that its a funny movie but ive never been more invested in the characters of a Chaplin movie before, because we actually feel often unsave for them.

 

Chaplin said, that if he knew the horrors of the Concentration camps, he woudnt have made the movie. I totally understand his point, but it woud have been a shame. This film is a masterpiece.