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How Charlie Chaplin used his uncanny resemblance to Hitler to fight fascism October 15, 202512:45 PM ET
It’s been 85 years since The Great Dictator dazzled audiences in 1940. It was a big risk for one of the world’s most popular performers to take a stand against fascism on film. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images hide caption
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Hollywood studios did not want Charlie Chaplin to make The Great Dictator. When he first started writing the script in 1938, the U.S. had not yet entered World War II. In fact, it still enjoyed friendly diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany, as well as many lucrative business ones.
So Chaplin financed The Great Dictator himself. He took advantage of his uncanny resemblance to Adolf Hitler by playing an obvious parody of the Nazi leader, named Adenoid Hynkel, in the film. But the parallels continued, as noted in the 2002 documentary, The Tramp and Dictator.
“Charlie Chaplin, the Little Tramp, and Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany, had more in common than just a moustache,” says the narrator. “They were born in the same week of the same month of the same year. A few years before Chaplin became famous as the Tramp, Hitler was a tramp. Both were outsiders who left their homeland to conquer the world. They became the best loved and most hated men of their time.”
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Satirizing Dictators Is Nothing New — Just Ask Charlie Chaplin
In The Great Dictator, Chaplin played another character as well: a likeable Jewish barber who finds himself mistaken for the odious Hynkel and who, at the end of the film, delivers an incredibly moving speech.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor,” he gently informs an assembly of Hynkel’s army and advisors. “I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible. Jew, gentile, Black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.”
Never before this film had the biggest star of silent film spoken aloud on screen.
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“Greed has poisoned men’s souls,” he continues, “has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in.”
Later, Charlie Chaplin said he hoped that talking from his heart might even help to end the war.
“Machinery that gives abundance, has left us in want,” he says in the speech. “Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.”
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‘Charlie Chaplin vs. America’ explores the accusations that sent a star into exile
‘Charlie Chaplin vs. America’ explores the accusations that sent a star into exile
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