The Great Dictator: Film Analysis

The Great Dictator:  Film Analysis

            Linda Sherman was a Jewish girl born in Amsterdam in 1926 and she was one of 7 children.  Their father passed away, and they ended up in an all girls’ Jewish home that was very strict and Orthodox.  Hungarian Erika Jacoby was born in 1928 and attended an Orthodox Jewish high school with 1600 other girls.  Countries like Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary felt safe from the Nazis because they were allies of Germany; the Jews thought they were safe and life went on for them, for the time being, as usual.  So begins the dark tale told in the movie, Swimming in Auschwitz.

            In 1937, as people began to forget about the tragedies of the First World War, the threat of Hitler and the Nazis began to arise.  This was a scary time.  In his autobiography, Charlie Chaplin writes, “…I was trying to write a story for Paulette [Goddard]; but I could make no progress.  How could I throw myself into feminine whimsy or think of romance or the problems of love when madness was being stirred up by a hideous, grotesque, Adolf Hitler?” (p386).  In other words, Chaplin felt there were more important world issues that could and should be addressed.  So, the idea occurred to him to write a parody about Hitler.  He played two roles in the film:  his iconic Tramp character was that of a Jewish barber (whose role is mostly silent), and also the role of Hynkel (the Hitler character), who has much more dialogue.  Before the film was finished, England declared war on the Nazis.  The Nazis invaded Russia before Chaplin even started filming (Chaplin, p388)

            During production, Chaplin received multiple letters encouraging him not to make the film.  People were worried, but Chaplin was unyielding.  Threats were made to blow up the theatres where the film was being shown and others threatened to create riots (Chaplin, p392).   My own grandmother saw the film in a theater in New York City when it came out and she said she was terrified the whole time that the Nazis were going to blow them up.  In its day, for obvious reasons, it was a very controversial film!  Nevertheless, after playing for 2 weeks in New York in 2 theaters, it ended up being the biggest money making motion picture up to that time (Chaplin, p393). 

            Swimming in Auschwitz goes on to explain that the Jewish population in Europe went from 20% in 1938 to a mere 6% in 1944.  In Hungary, from 5/15/44-7/8/44 – just 54 days – 147 trains carried away 437,402 Jews.  This was a 3 day train ride in cattle cars.  There were no bathrooms, no water and no air.  Arriving at the camps, their luggage was taken away.  They were made to strip, their heads were shaven and all their body hair was shaven.  They were left outside in the night.  People would yell, “Look at the fire and chimneys and the smoke!”  There were those that believed it was the bakeries or factories where they would find work, but the overseers explained to them it was the gas chambers.  Of the 1600 girls at Erika Jacoby’s school, a mere 20 survived. 

            The women’s barracks were built to hold 52 horses, but each held about 800 women.

            Swimming in Auschwitz became increasingly difficult for me to watch.  The survivors talked about seeing babies thrown into fire pits.  One woman that had been a nurse in her former life recounted helping a woman give birth to a baby.  She cut the umbilical cord with her teeth.  The Nazis took the baby to clean it, washed it and then shot it. 

            In my own experience, almost one year ago exactly, I had the opportunity to visit Prague.  They have what they call a Jewish Museum, which is a series of synagogues and cemeteries in what was once the Jewish ghetto.  One room in The Pinkas Synagogue includes children’s drawings that were found in a large box.  The images included trains leaving stations and of people being hung.  These drawings were made by children that were maybe 6 years old.  In the main part of the synagogue, the walls are covered in some 80,000 names of Jews that left the Jewish ghetto in Prague and never came back.  Needless to say, the genocide that took place in Europe during World War II is something one cannot grasp unless one sees it on such a personal level.

 

            In his autobiography, Chaplin writes, “Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator.  I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis.” (p388).  He goes on to explain that what his intent was, was to mock their ridiculous idea that there could ever be a perfect race.  He says, “As though such a thing ever existed outside of the Australian aboriginals.” (p388)  In other words, they are so far removed from the rest of this crazy world that their culture and their tradition are the oldest surviving one on our planet.  And they are peaceful.

            The subject matter of The Great Dictator quite clearly relates to the political context of its day.  It was extremely controversial at the time.  The audience first gets a laugh at the Germans when we see the giant cannon “Big Bertha”.  It is capable of launching bombs 75 or so miles away and its intended target was a cathedral in France.  In its place it hit the watershed.  On a second attempt, the bomb just fell out of the cannon and they very nearly blew themselves up instead.  Also, Chaplin does a wonderful job in his initial speech as Hynkel, which he gives in gibberish-German.  The Minister of the Interior is even called “Herr Garbage”.  As afraid of Hitler and of the Nazi’s the world at this time was, Chaplin successfully gives us the opportunity to laugh at him and his regime.  Chaplin has been quoted as saying, “Humor heightens our sense of survival and preserves our sanity.” 

            The last scene of the film is not so funny.  The Dictator’s speech I must have watched twenty times over, and it still makes me cry.  The film is obviously concentrating on a world facing The Second World War, but the message Chaplin delivers in this speech is timeless. He says, “I should like to help everyone – if possible – Jew, Gentile – black men – white…. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.  Greed has poisoned men’s souls.”  While this film speaks loudly for the audience it was produced for, the final scene speaks multitudes to us all, no matter where we come from or what era we are a part of.  The timeless moral of the story is, I suppose, being able to laugh through troubled times allows us to get through a great deal.

Works Cited

Chaplin, Charles, director. The Great Dictator. 1940.

Kean, Jon, director. Swimming in Auschwitz. Bala Cynwyd Productions, 2009. 

Chaplin, Charles. My Autobiography. Brooklyn / London, Melville House, 1964.