The Depths of Pretension #5 - The Great Dictator (the short one)

Let's get this out of the way quickly: Charlie Chaplin is considered by many to be one of the greatest talents to have ever been put on film and many of his films could still be watched today with the same amount of awe that not many films of the early 20th century can say. As for myself, until this series, I haven't seen any of his films. This has given me some ample opportunity to do so due to the amount of Chaplin films on the Criterion Collection and that has lead me to do something about it where I'll at least try and cover some of his movies every once in a while and to start off this arrangement, I'm going to go with his first true talking picture, the 1940 film The Great Dictator.

From the title and the era that the movie came out in, it could be very easy to figure out what the movie is about, mainly how it is at heart satirizing Nazi Germany and Hitler, which came to Chaplin to go through with it after repeated viewings of Triumph of the Will, which helped him get into the mannerisms and character of Hitler. I do not know all that much about the rest of the production but it was also made aware that Chaplin himself had said that if he had heard about what was going on with the concentration camps he would not have made the film. But getting back to the movie, I am not sure if I'll be able to judge this fairly since the age of the film and my unawareness of the type of humor in the movie might not be to my taste or that I might not really get it but it'd be worth expanding my film vocabulary.

Because of what I said before, this will probably be a short post since I am not sure really what to talk about with this one. I did find parts of it funny, like with the scientists showing Hynkell their inventions and having them fail rather hysterically along with Hynkell's speeches in gibberish German but some of it I didn't get. Maybe it has to do with my tastes in comedy changing constantly over the years and not really having a center to grasp onto but I did like that it was able to convey something serious throughout and especially during the last half hour or so. The ending speech that the barber gives at the end is really good which does add to the historical significance of the movie and for that, I am glad to have seen it. I might give it another watch sometime soon and see if there is more I can talk about it at that time but for now I'm not sure what to get at and I am sorry for not being able to talk about it more. Hopefully the next few days will bring up something more substantial as it will be really interesting to get into.