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.
