I often bump into a memorable story that I have never heard before. How about you? Here is a story from the 1940 Charlie Chaplin movie “The Great Dictator”. It certainly was not part of the movie plot. The story, though, was the most memorable part of the movie as the thinking and personality of Charlie Chaplin.
Let’s set the background to the movie and to the story itself.
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In 1938, the world’s most famous movie star began to prepare a spoof about the monster of the 20th century. Charlie Chaplin looked a little like Adolf Hitler, in part because Hitler had chosen the same toothbrush mustache as the Little Tramp. Exploiting that resemblance, Chaplin devised a satire in which the dictator and a Jewish barber from the ghetto would be mistaken for each other.
The result, released in 1940, was “The Great Dictator,” Chaplin’s first talking picture and the highest-grossing of his career, although it would cause him great difficulties and indirectly lead to his long exile from the United States.
Here is an excerpt from a review of the movie by Roger Ebert:
Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” (1940) came some 12 years after the introduction of sound, but it was Chaplin’s first all-talking picture and the first in which we heard the Little Tramp speak. The dialog turned out to be his last words; Chaplin never used the Tramp character again after this film.
Chaplin conceived and filmed “The Great Dictator” during a period when an accommodation with Hitler was still thought possible in some quarters; indeed, he must have been filming when Neville Chamberlain went to Munich. But Chaplin himself had no such optimism, and his portrait of Adenoid Hynkel, dictator of Tomania, was among the first declarations of war on Hitler. The film also prophesied the persecution of the Jews, and the scenes of stormtroopers terrorizing the Ghetto were thought at the time to go too far. What a sad joke that seems today.
If Chaplin had not been “premature,” however, it is unlikely he would have made the film at all. Once the horrors of the Holocaust began to be known, Hitler was no longer funny, not at all.
In 1940, this would have played as very highly charged, because Chaplin was launching his comic persona against Hitler in an attempt, largely successful, to ridicule him as a clown. Audiences reacted strongly to the film’s humor; it won five Oscar nominations, for picture, actor, supporting actor, screenplay, and music. But the movie went dead when Chaplin gave his speech.
Chaplin nevertheless was determined to keep the speech; it perhaps might have been his reason for making the film. He put the Little Tramp and $1.5 million of his own money on the line to ridicule Hitler. The movie helped in directing more millions to Jewish refugee centers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FMNFvKEy4c
Here is the inspiring speech of the famous actor Charlie Chaplin in the film “The Great Dictator”. If you would prefer to watch the movie clip, you can see it here.
I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business – I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.
We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.
We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world, there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say “Do not despair”.
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish…
Soldiers – don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, and treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written” the kingdom of God is within man” – not one man, nor a group of men – but in all men – in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power – let us all unite.
Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise, and they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise.
Let us fight to free the world, do away with national barriers, and do away with greed, and with hate, and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.
Soldiers – in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
It is apparent that the Tramp’s heartfelt closing plea for peace and human brotherhood is spoken by Chaplin himself, stepping out of character to make a personal statement on the eve of the war with Hitler.
The speech did not fit into the fabric of the rest of the film, but the passage of years has made it seem uncannily appropriate. It certainly represented Chaplin’s views perfectly. He was just a little ahead of his time.