Posted By BillHeise on March 27, 2009

Having joked about Hitler with Spike Jones, I thought I would get serious about Hitler today. This is the last speech of The Great Dictator, certainly one of my favorite films of all time.

Wikipedia has this to say about that:

First released in October 1940, it was Chaplin’s first true talking picture, and more importantly was the only major film of its period to bitterly satirise Nazism and Adolf Hitler, culminating in an overt political plea to defy fascism.

The film is unusual for its period, in the days prior to American entry into World War II, as the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany. Chaplin’s film advanced a stirring, controversial condemnation of Hitler, fascism, antisemitism, and the Nazis, the latter of whom he excoriates in the film as “machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts”. Despite the fact that the United States was currently at peace when the movie was made, Charlie Chaplin bitterly opposed the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler long before most Americans did.

It’s important to understand that Chaplin was addressing America in 1940, more than a year before America entered the war. America had been resisting entering the war in Europe, feeling that it was another internecine struggle between powers and not the moral challenge of the century, which it became after America entered and remained after it was over. Having given his rousing speech on the theme “You are not machines. You are men!” Chaplin seems to realize that this is a hope for the future, a future for which he hopes mankind will now fight. His change in expression from rousing idealist to sad realist as he realizes this is one of the most touching scenes in all of film, I think. Chaplin’s a genius.

Here’s my favorite scene in the movie:

If you’ve never seen this film, rent it today.

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