The Tramp Finally Speaks

Rating: 10/10 (30 November 2010)

Charlie Chaplin certainly put off speaking on cinema long enough. His bread and butter was made with his little tramp character on the silent screen. But when Chaplin finally did speak he spoke some of the most memorable prose ever spoken on the cinema. The eloquence of his appeal for universal brotherhood is maybe more relevant today than even back in 1940 when he decided to satirize Nazi Germany in The Great Dictator.
In his memoirs Chaplin said that he would never have made The Great Dictator had he suspected for a moment exactly the extent of what was going on in Nazi Germany. It was bad enough in 1940, but of course Hitler's final solution doctrine about systematic extermination wasn't put in place until the following year. After that Nazi Germany provided damn few laughs.
As the film opens Chaplin hearkens back to his World War I classic Shoulder Arms when we see him as a bumbling soldier during World War I. He saves the life of air ace Reginald Gardiner, but in doing so is injured and loses his memory. Some fifteen years later Charlie regains his memory and leaves the hospital and returns to his profession as barber in the Jewish quarter of his native city.
No one notices, but the little barber with the funny mustache bears no small resemblance to the dictator of his country of Ptomania, Adenoid Hynkel. And as it turns out Reginald Gardiner who is a storm trooper commandant gets reacquainted with his savior and has a reassessment of his feelings about Jews. Of course in the end that resemblance proves to be Gardiner and Chaplin's salvation and in Chaplin's fantasy world the salvation of humanity.
In his Hynkel persona Chaplin was the first on the screen to satirize Hitler, to make him an object of ridicule. Later on when America was finally in World War II in some of our lesser propaganda efforts, Hitler impersonators like Bobby Watson leaned heavily on what Chaplin did in The Great Dictator. Of course his best Hynkel moment is the famous dream scene where the globe becomes a big beach ball type balloon with Chaplin lovingly treating it in the best fetishistic manner.
As the barber Chaplin also goes back to his little tramp roots and is seen giving one of his customers a shave to the music of Brahm's Number 5 Dance could have been done in any of his silent classics.
Chaplin's final speech was a masterpiece. People like Orson Welles, Paul Muni, and Spencer Tracy are probably the players most noted for giving long addresses well on screen, but for a man whose cinematic career was spent in silence up to that point, Chaplin was nothing short of brilliant. When the Tramp finally spoke, what profound things he had to say.
The Great Dictator made a pile of money for United Artists of whom one of the partners was Charlie Chaplin. It received five Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor for Chaplin, Best Supporting Actor for Jack Oakie, Best Musical Score for Meredith Willson, and Best Original Screenplay for Chaplin. Curiously enough Charlie wasn't nominated for Best Director.
Casting Jack Oakie as the spoof dictator Nappoloni based on that other Axis partner Mussolini was a stroke of genius. Oakie played loudmouth blowhards his entire film career and as Nappoloni of Bacteria, Oakie played one of the biggest blowhards in history. Oakie lost to Walter Brennan for The Westerner and Chaplin gave way to Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story. Chaplin did win the New York Film Critic's Award for Best Actor in 1940.
Others worthy of note are Charlie's then estranged wife Paulette Goddard as the barber's love interest. Paulette who was Paulette Levy by birth played a Jew for maybe the only time in her career. Henry Daniell is minister of propaganda Garbitsch and he's his usual cold and cynical, but Charlie should have gotten Martin Kosleck who got a lot of work during World War II with a dead-on impersonation of Joseph Goebbels. For Air Minister Herring who would you get for the weight challenged Herman Goerring, but Billy Gilbert.
In a world where a lot of self seeking politicians and terrorists appeal to the worst in man, The Great Dictator is timeless because of its appeal to the better angels of our nature as James Madison phrased it. Never miss this when it is broadcast it will renew your human spirit.