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Charlie Chaplin & the Attack of the Machine

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Charlie Chaplin & the Attack of the Machine COLONIAL THEATRE ILLUMINATING CINEMA: 227 Bridge Street, Phoenixville, PA 19460 THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940) Tel: 610.917.1228 Fax: 610.917.0509 www.thecolonialtheatre.com Charlie Chaplin & the Attack of the Machine Men By Andrew Owen, PhD For Chaplin, it supposedly began in 1937, when, writer, director and producer, Alexander Korda suggested that he make a film about mistaken identity, the two central characters being Adolf Hitler and Chaplin’s own ‘Little Tramp.’ After all, they both had the same sort of mustache. The toothbrush. According to Chaplin, he didn’t think too much of the idea at the time it was suggested, even when Korda proposed that he, Chaplin, play both parts (Chaplin, 1964: 386). Of course, Korda wasn’t the only one who had noticed the resemblance between the hobo and the Fuhrer. For example, the April 21st issue of the British magazine The Spectator, looking beyond mere physical similarities, noted that both men were born in the same year, within a few days of each other in fact - Chaplin on April 16, 1889, and Adolf, a mere four days later, on the April 20th. The article also drew attention to a couple of other noteworthy parallels: firstly, the fact that both men possessed genius, was, to the article’s writer, at least, undeniable, and secondly, both were concerned with “the predicament of the ‘little man’ in society.” Ultimately, Chaplin’s desire to work again (at this time in his career he was averaging a film every three to five years), as well as the opportunity to juxtapose the rhetoric of fascism, as presented by Hitler, with that of the theatrical tropes of burlesque and pantomime, was deemed too good to be missed. As Chaplin himself stated, “Hitler must be laughed at” (Chaplin, 1964: 387). However, this was before the outbreak of the Second World War. To both America and Britain, Adolf Hitler was the legal leader of a foreign nation, and therefore must be shown respect, irrespective of his actions or attitudes. Indeed, in late 1938, the Head Secretary of the British Board of Film Censors (B.B.F.C.), Brook Wilkinson, had contacted Joseph Breen at the Hays Office in the U.S. to ascertain whether he knew what the basic outline of the plot of Chaplin’s film was, fearful that such a satirical attack on Hitler could cause a “delicate situation” to arise. Similarly, on October 31 of the same year, Dr. George Gyssling, the German Chief Consul, had also contacted Breen, again, like Wilkinson, attempting to ascertain what Chaplin’s exact intentions were, especially regarding the characterization of Hitler, adding that such a film would lead to “serious troubles and complications” (Gardner, 1987: 125-6). Breen promptly sent both communications to Chaplin, whose response has sadly not been recorded. However, he does acknowledge the difficulties in his autobiography, mentioning that the Hays Office had advised that such a film would have serious censorship difficulties, while the B.B.F.C. had stated that the film would probably be banned in 1 Britain. However, Chaplin was resolute, “determined to ridicule [the Nazis] mystic bilge about a pure-blooded race” (Chaplin, 1964: 388). Of course, for some, this is the essential element of humor, stating that it is too banal an argument to dismiss comedy as something so simplistic as mere entertainment. To this way of thinking, humor is a specific form of deviance; a societal and cultural mechanism crafted to go against the norm in whatever its guise; be it moral, behavioral, or ideological. For example, George Orwell (1945) argues that humor must be vulgar, meaning that the comedian should not lazily wallow in obscenity or simple acts of immorality for their own sake, but should raise “topics which the rich, the powerful, and the complacent would prefer to see left alone.” For Orwell, true vulgarity is to be the “tiny revolution,” to confront topics and issues which those in power dread to hear discussed. According to some, humor has the ability (perhaps we could even say “duty”) to discuss any subject, no matter how contentious it may be; indeed “nothing is so sacred, so taboo, or so disgusting that it cannot be the subject of humor” (Dundes & Hauschild, 1988: 56). As Freud (1905) argues, humor has been created by society to allow us to communicate our aggression over a topic, group or individual, while still conforming to the rules and laws of the environment. Simply put, why risk arrest by punching someone in the nose, when you could ridicule every aspect of their lives instead. Humor is that mechanism which allows us to voice our anger or dissatisfaction at something, no matter how difficult or painful that subject matter may be. Such observations on humor seem to epitomize much at the core of Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). Throughout the 1930s, Chaplin had become increasingly concerned with the state of world politics; epitomized by the rise of totalitarian regimes, personified by Stalin in the Soviet Union, Hitler in Nazi Germany, Mussolini in Italy, and Franco in Spain. Found scribbled on a folio notebook amongst Chaplin’s papers is a poem dedicated, “To a dead Loyalist soldier on the battlefields of Spain.” Its single stanza contemplating the sacrifice of life that the young must make for the political rhetoric of patriotism created by those that send them to such mindless slaughter. “Prone, mangled form, Your silence speaks your deathless cause, Of freedom’s dauntless march. Though treachery befell you on this day And built its barricades of fear and hate Triumphant death has cleared the way Beyond the scrambling of human life Beyond the pale of imprisoning spears To let you pass.” (Quoted in Robinson, 1994: 486) Chaplin had infamously communicated his views on patriotism to a reporter in 1931, describing it as, “the greatest insanity the world has ever suffered,” arguing that, if there was to be another war, “I hope they send old men to the front next time, for it is the old men who are the real criminals in Europe today” (Quoted in Robinson, 1994: 437). 2 The early decades of the twentieth century had seen Europe become seemingly engulfed in the twin furies of hate and intolerance; their destructive aim directed towards those racial and ethnic groups that were deemed different, and therefore morally and socially problematic, by national leaders; each of whom was busy wallowing in a self-satisfied stew of vitriolic patriotism. For Chaplin, they had turned the minds of humans into machines, the organic into the mechanical, crafting, through fear, a brutal willingness to destroy all that their leaders deemed inferior to the eugenic ideal. “In training camps men were taught how to attack with a bayonet – how to yell, rush and stick it in the enemy’s guts, and if the blade got stuck in his groin, to shoot into his guts to loosen it.” (Chaplin, 1964: 223) Chaplin had visited such subject matter before; his previous film, Modern Times (1936), focused on how the capitalist’s greed for greater profit would relentlessly drive the worker to merciless increased productivity, enslaving them to their position in the assembly line, before literally turning them into a machine whose sole reason for existence is to increase the monetary gain of their bourgeoisie master. It is an argument akin to that of Karl Marx in his text, The Grundrisse, written during the winter of 1857-58, but remaining unpublished until 1939, “[Capitalism] gradually transforms the workers’ operations into more and more mechanical ones, so that at a certain point a mechanism can step into their places…Hence the workers’ struggle against machinery.” (Marx, 1939) In The Great Dictator, Chaplin’s interests lay in exposing those mechanisms able to transform a human being, an entity capable of love and compassion, into a machine fashioned to kill, seemingly devoid of all remorse. In a short story entitled Rhythm: A Story of Men in Macabre Movement (1938), Chaplin used this concept by portraying a firing squad, ordered to execute an artist whose only crime was to publicly speak out against a political regime. The artist was a man that the members of the firing squad all loved and respected, whom they hoped would be reprieved. However, disciplined into a machine, each of them could not forestall their actions once the mechanism had been engaged – ready, aim, fire – even when the reprieve that they all hoped for had been granted. “Six men each held a gun. Six men had been trained through rhythm. Six men, hearing the shout ‘Stop!’ Fired.” Interestingly, in his autobiography, Chaplin seems to confess a certain level of remorse for using his humor to explore these elements, stating, “Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator; I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis.” (Chaplin, 1964) This sentiment seems antithetical to the argument concerning the essential quality of humor as described by Orwell and Freud. Obviously, it is not difficult to understand that laughing at the actions of the Nazis might be misconstrued as somehow effectively belittling the momentous inhumanity of their policies and undertakings. However, with all humility, I would argue that 3 Chaplin’s film is the more powerful and necessary because of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis. Antonin Obrdlik (1942) noticed that countries, such as Czechoslovakia, under Nazi occupation began to develop a form of humor deliberately crafted to undermine the oppressive regime that they instigated, while simultaneously succeeding in bolstering the morale of those they oppressed; effectively strengthening their desire to resist.
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