How long a man can be condemned by his acts? By his innovative ideas and principles? How long a man can be condemned by talking what he thinks finally? These are the questions can that appear when we watch Charlie Chaplin’ The Great Dictator. The movie is set between the World Wars, and there is a jew barber, who fights in army of Tomania, during the World War I, and He suffers loss of memory when he decides to help an officer named Schultz, whose plane crashes into a tree with both. So the barber was admitted in a hospital for twenty years and when he left the place, he has no idea what happens in Tomania, therefore, he doesn’t know that Adenoid Hynkel has become dictator of Tomania and he is persecuting the jews. The Barber and the dictator are played by Chaplin, and they change places in a moment.
It is very important to know which moment this film has created and why it is a great and essential film. Chaplin left England to go to the USA to make his dreams like a comic actor, since that country was a place where every dream becomes true, as he said in a biographical film (Chaplin, 1992).
In 1914 was the first apperison to the famous Chaplin’ character – The Tramp – and this creation means the success to him. Chaplin directed many films, most of them silent films, even when everybody was making sound films, he kept with his silent and funny Tramp.
The Great Dictator was released in 1940, when the Second War was happening. So Chaplin decided to create a character to criticize the Nazism and fascism in Europe. Then He gave voice to his characters with an intention to show his principles and thoughts about the real democracy and humanism.
There are famous and classic scenes like the globe scene, when Hynkel, a figure based on Adolf Hitler, plays with a globe, or the speech scene, which the jew barber replaces the dictator by mistake and talks to people of Tomania:
– 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. Soldiers (…) 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 (…) Although the speech scene just cause emotion, it generated suspicion of that Chaplin was a communist. It is necessary to understand how capitalist countries led with Nazism and fascism before the second war. They don’t stop Hitler before his atrocities because there was an interest to prevent the communism rising. Then any discourse about democracy or liberty was taken as a socialist discourse, and the mccarthyism persecuted any person who thought in humanist way.
There was a black list with many names of artists, writers, composers, historians, because of that Chaplin has been banned form USA. But in 1972, He comes back to receive the second honor Oscar for his contribution to the cinema.His film in until these days is considering a present movie about humanity, liberty and beliefs in a world could be changed, like the jew said:
–We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.
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