Anyone else think this guy looks familiar???
Charlie Chaplin’s first non-silent movie, THE GREAT DICTATOR, was both a sidesplitter and a rallying cry for a world at war. It’s best remembered for its closing monologue — a clear-eyed and impassioned call to reject the hatred and moral emptiness of the tide of fascism rising across the world at the time of its release — but it’s full of great bits and sight gags, too, all in the interest of defanging the leader of the Nazi party. Whether he’s embroiled in a game of one-upsmanship with uneasy allies, coughing his way through boisterous addresses, or having a bit of a musical theater moment with his bouncy globe, Chaplin’s Hitler analogue was explicitly created to make the world laugh at one of the most dangerous men in modern history.
In this episode, we discuss what its success as a talkie owes to Chaplin’s mastery of the silent film form, figure out how much there is to love versus what you’ve just gotta respect, review Chaplin’s troubled relationship with the U.S. government, and interrogate what the world learned (or didn’t) from Chaplin’s prescient exercise in slapstick propaganda.
References:
#NazisWeHateTheseGuys #35mm
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Show art by Emily Csuy. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: “Main Title” by Meredith Willson from the THE GREAT DICTATOR soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 338: THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940)
2:49 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
4:19 - What ‘works’ and doesn’t for us in Chaplin’s first sound film
10:56 - The tension of satire vs. “important” cinema, and whether or not you could make something like this
today
24:23 - Corollary villains and real-world victims
32:23 - The plottiness, meandering focus, and payoff
44:31 - The real legacy of THE GREAT DICTATOR and what an explicitly political movie did for Chaplin’s career
53:32 - The best bits and gags
1:03:54 - The Junk Drawer
1:12:38 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1940
1:16:44 - Cody’s Noteys: The Great Quick Tater (french fry trivia)
