The best thing so far about this little project of mine is that I've been able to see in action filmmakers and performers I only know by reputation. Popping my Sergio Leone cherry with Once Upon a Time in America was incredible, and in watching The Great Dictator I got to see Charlie Chaplin for the first time. Obviously he's most famous as The Tramp, but honestly The Great Dictator was really the film I was most looking forward to, having read about it in advance.
From the first title card, I was laughing.
"Any resemblance between Hynkel the dictator and the Jewish barber is purely coincidental."
Chaplin, obviously, played both parts. And a rather large plot point in the film is entirely based on the fact that Hynkel and the barber look similar.
Anyway, the one thing I took away from watching The Great Dictator was that Charlie Chaplin must have some enormous fucking balls.
It's 1940, Nazism is rampant in Europe but the United States are officially still at peace with Germany, and the world-famous veteran performer Charlie Chaplin goes and makes a movie completely ripping Hitler and the Nazis to shreds with vicious satire. And not only that, he rips them to shreds again with an earnest, heartfelt anti-discrimination monologue at the end of the film. Obviously it's hard to imagine what it would have been like to watch The Great Dictator in 1940, but even in suburban Melbourne in 2009 I was slightly taken aback by it.
