Brightening The Darkest Moments With a Wink and a Smile

Rating: 7/10 (15 March 2008)

"In this land of the crazy the sane are mad", wrote Edmund Cooper. This 1940 Chaplin classic is as great an example of that phenomenon as you will find. Yes, it is indeed strange that Chaplin's Adenoid Hynkel should pull spaghetti apart in frustration, whilst arguing with his dictatorial rival in the shape of Jack Oakie's Napoloni; but how much stranger, darker and ultimately madder were the hatreds engendered, crimes committed and murders perpetrated during the run up to, and through the course of, WW2? A satire has to contain recognisable human characteristics, instincts and foibles - when this was made it was known how bad Nazism was, but not the extent of the persecution, death camps and ethnic cleansing. A quite extraordinary line in the film about the discovery of a wonder poison gas, acutely and poignantly envisages the ultimate madness, the gas chambers.
The delightful scene in which Hynkel plays footie with an inflated globe, bouncing it twice on his buttocks, before finding it burst in his grasp, is a great metaphor for Hitler's megalomania; and the touching Paulette Goddard, who plays Hannah, is both willing to take on the stormtroopers and go out with an amnesia suffering, older Jewish barber, living below her parents rooms - boy, if I could achieve such social success, I'd grab the scissors right now and forget all things good, bad or indifferent beforehand.
Chaplin's final soliloquy may be deemed somewhat pretentious, but his condemnation of anti-semitism and call for racial tolerance amongst black and white, all classes, races and creeds, should be pinned to the wall of every UN representative's office, right now. 21st Century audiences can learn as much from this film as 20th Century ones. Hynkel and Napoloni may be buffoons, but this acerbic classic is as potent now as it was then. Buffoonery can sometimes, just sometimes, be evil.