Chaplin Week – The Great Dictator

It was some 11 years after the dawn of the talkie before Charles Chaplin made the leap to dialogue-driven sound film. While City Lights and Modern Times were very much “sound” films, they lacked the one key ingredient that most associate with the jump; the spoken word. With The Great Dictator audiences finally heard the “tramp” speak.

It’s actually a little disconcerting hearing Charlie Chaplin speak for the first time. From mute to softly spoken English man in the flash of an eye, it’s actually quite easy to understand why Chaplin was so apprehensive about leaving behind the days of old. Citing communication to the international masses as his reasoning, Chaplin maintained an insistence on dialogue-free cinema for far longer than any of his contemporaries, and was arguably the lone voice (pun intended) to successfully make the leap on an A-list level.

The Great Dictator has the feel of a genuine Epic Hollywood production. Introduced via a grand orchestral driven score, reminiscent of the finest that De Mille ever used, and accompanied via a narration mimicking that of a newsreel announcer, the film takes place over a number of years, from the fields of the first World War through to the eve of what would be the second. That Chaplin chooses to set his film in the fictional land of Tomania was a political necessity, given the controversial standing of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in the US at the time when the film went in to production (America wasn’t involved in the war at this point, and were attempting to remain politically ambiguous).

While Chaplin may have added dialogue to his repertoire of comedy, and while the films crux most certainly rests upon the lengthy speeches that punctuate the film, he most certainly maintained the visual heavy, sight gags that his earlier work relied upon. As the film opens we are introduced to the world of The Great Dictator, it’s heightened sense of self via an exaggerated and over the top manned gun, all cogs and malfunctioning gears, in a sequence that harks back to the “technology-out-of-control” mantra of the opening reel of Modern Times. With a certain irony, this ridiculous weapon of war causes more hassle for those attempting to harm others with it, as opposed to the intended victims. It’s the kind of set piece that one would expect from the little tramp. The visual led comedy is maintained throughout the films opening section; in that act alone we have the famous gag in which a grenade somehow manages to fall down Chaplin’s everyman soldier’s jacket sleeve, and a section revolving around a pair of characters unknowingly flying upside down. It’s fascinatingly purely visual humour, especially when one takes in to account just how much of a statement Chaplin-In-Sound essentially was.

The visually rich comedy scenarios are presented with the kind of immaculate and aesthetic beauty that one would expect from the Chaplin this period. The most remarkable sequence would have to be the one in which Chaplin’s soldier wanders through the “fog of war”, a proverb made actual by his eye for atmosphere. As a constructed work The Great Dictator impresses. Techniques such as the utilization of newsreel conventions to indicate the passing of time, coupled with a successful mastery in the presentation of the horror of the situation work really well; the storming of the ghetto is genuinely frightening, and is a sequence that wouldn’t have felt out of place in Rome, Open City. The Great Dictator was filmed in Hollywood, yet a sparse European feel is present in the topography.

The one area where the film really suffer is in its pacing. This is endemic of the struggles faced by many of the filmmakers who were working at the time of the great transition from shorts to feature length in the late teens had, and bears the hallmarks of a filmmaker trying to adapt to something new. Funnily enough Chaplin made the jump to feature successfully, it was only when dialogue was introduced that it became an issue.

Chaplin as a performer is often accused of being rather one note, and of being one whose repertoire was hardly diverse, yet The Great Dictator shows just what he could be capable of (as did the work that followed). His dual performance here, as the characters of the barber and of Hynkel, the fascist dictator of Tomania, and clear analogue of Hitler, couldn’t be more diverse, with the subtleties of each performance separating the two entirely. The key is ego; both performances take place, in part at least, in front of mirrors. The tyrannical performer directly seeks out narcissism, whereas the barber is placed in front of one by the very nature of his work: a suitable epitaph for a new period in the life of the performer, as Chaplin took one last look at the persona of old before heading out in a different direction.