Banned in Nazi Germany after infuriating the Fuhrer, The Great Dictator is one of many masterpieces by Charlie Chaplin. You could see why Hitler hated this movie, as it made fun of him from beginning to end. What’s especially surreal about this movie is the time in which it was made, 1940, at the height of German power. You could imagine how pissed Hitler was, as he watched it from his palatial digs overseeing the Eiffel Tower.
It was slapstick comedy all the way through, until the end, when Chaplin gave an emotional sermon, indicative of the dark days of 1940.
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Great film
Yes, a great one.
Chaplin was a brave man. Hitler could have sent somebody over here to find him & kill him.
We can all relate to greed as an explanation for evil. Who hasn’t wanted more than their “fair share” of something at some point in time? But I don’t think greed was Hitler’s primary problem. Hitler seems to have been an aggressive paranoid, who was paranoid about the imaginary harm that non-Aryan races, and other groups, might do to Germany. So he planned to do unto them before they did unto him.
The lesson of the Naziis is that we should always keep aggressive paranoid people, and other dangerously insane people, out of positions of power. Some citizens are attracted to such types though, mistakenly thinking that the aggressiveness is strength.
Most mentally ill people are not dangerous, but aggressive paranoids are.
We all have our anxieties at times. But people who, when they have unrealistic fears, want to calm their nerves by killing millions of innocent people– they ought to be sent to prison or (if they haven’t committed the act yet but only planned it) to some heavily locked down institution for the criminally insane– not to a position in government. Hopefully, we can all learn from Germany’s mistake..
So obviously your on the Trump train. Lol. Nice comment, hadn’t thought about hitler with that perspective.
Thanks, Moosh.
BTW, Trump seems to be a very different type. The danger he poses is that he is unbelievably self-centered. He is very aggressive– but mainly because he’s aggressively in favor of anything that he thinks will make people admire him.
But governing a country is not just about glory for the individual who holds the position of president. So someone like Trump can get very out of touch with the realities of what governing is really about. Narcissists can also be rather thin skinned– not a great quality in a president.
Hitler found the film amusing https://medium.com/war-is-boring/charlie-chaplin-made-hitler-cry-17f8c7d611f9#.69guvdl0e
Are there any VR tester readers?
Fly – Excellent taste! Thanks for bringing this work to our attention. There’s a reason Library of Congress has preserved this piece in the United States National Film Registry…requirements being a “culturally, historically or aesthetically work”.