The Great Dictator (1940)

[Dimentio]

I am just putting it up here because it obviously is available in its entirity on Youtube. I think it offers an interesting methodology for criticising fascism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Q4c4HGNDE

[Communist]

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Great film. The dvd has interesting extras too.
A later Chaplin film with a bitter backstory is A King In New York (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050598/). It deals with McCarthyism, commercialism and many other things, and I love it. Also a great dvd.

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[x359594]

....A later Chaplin film with a bitter backstory is A King In New York (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050598/). It deals with McCarthyism, commercialism and many other things...

Certainly one of the most radical films of its era (mid-1950s) since it's virtually the only movie to actually mock McCarthyism and HUAC. As Roberto Rosselini said of A King in New York, "It's the work of a free man."

[rednordman]

Who would have ever thought that CC was a communist? According to wiki, it may well have been the case.

[Uncle Hank]

Well I think CC was totally fucking rad. So he's a radical right?

[ChrisK]

Most of Chaplins films had a socialist message in them. I'm a fan of Modern Times and the Great Dictator.

[x359594]

Most of Chaplins films had a socialist message in them...

Many of his short films made in the 1914 to 1919 era concerned working class life, with Chaplin playing such characters as waiters, brick layers, carpenters, and with comic scenes built around tricking the boss. Often the character got fired from his job and was reduced to competing with other unemployed for work or begging.

As near as I can tell the only time Chaplin played a white collar character was in Monsieur Verdoux (1947) a serial killer. The movie ends with Verdoux's ironic courtroom speech indicting war and capitalism. It was his last Hollywood movie.

[Robocommie]

The speech that Chaplin gives at the climax of The Great Dictator is unbelievably inspiring. And certainly more so because it almost seems Chaplin is breaking character and speaking to the audience of the film, directly. His choice of words, and the purity of his message, is to me very nearly perfect.

[MarxSchmarx]

The speech that Chaplin gives at the climax of The Great Dictator is unbelievably inspiring. And certainly more so because it almost seems Chaplin is breaking character and speaking to the audience of the film, directly. His choice of words, and the purity of his message, is to me very nearly perfect.

I remember when i first saw it I thought it was cheesy and corney as all get out, but then again, you're probably right, he probably was speaking to the audience, and one has to remember that that was a different time and oratory was a different art.

[x359594]

...he probably was speaking to the audience, and one has to remember that that was a different time and oratory was a different art.

You bet he was speaking at a different time. When The Great Dictator was released in the autumn of 1940 Hitler's armies were over running Europe and the US still remained isolationist. There were only a handful of Hollywood liberal and leftists who actively agitated against Hitler (most of them were European born, many fugitives from Nazi Germany.)

For another example of anti-isolationist rhetoric of that era see the ending of Foreign Correspondent also from 1940 produced by Hollywood liberal Walter Wanger and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

[Cal Engime]

I remember when i first saw it I thought it was cheesy and corney as all get out, but then again, you're probably right, he probably was speaking to the audience, and one has to remember that that was a different time and oratory was a different art.I heard that Chaplin changed the ending to an out-of-character speech after Hitler actually annexed Austria. I am willing to bet the original ending was funnier.

If memory serves, Chaplin said of his politics, "I have no political convictions. I'm an individualist. I believe in liberty." My impression has always been that Chaplin opposed industrialisation, but he didn't consider it a political problem with a political solution. At most, I'd say Chaplin was a left libertarian; maybe just a libertarian.

Chaplin even denied that A King in New York was a political film. I wouldn't be surprised if he placed high hopes in the Soviet Union as a nation where people were treated like human beings, as did just about everyone else in the 40s, but according to him, all he wanted was to make people laugh.

[x359594]

...If memory serves, Chaplin said of his politics, "I have no political convictions. I'm an individualist. I believe in liberty." ...Chaplin even denied that A King in New York was a political film....according to him, all he wanted was to make people laugh.

As the old saying has it, "Never trust the artist, trust the work."

[bayano]

A lot of people know/knew Charlie Chaplin was a socialist. He's still popular in Cuba and there are movie theatres named after him.

If only it wasn't for his preference for teen girls. Not to rain on the parade :D