The Great Dictator was one of Charlie Chaplin’s first movies with sound. This movie was made in 1936 and ridiculed Hitler around the same time he was coming to power.
This movie interested me because last year in US History, Mr. Simpson, the history teacher, said that this movie accurately reflected the way Americans saw Germany. He said that Americans did not take Hitler seriously as a threat in the mid 1930s. Charlie Chaplin acts just the way he does in any of his other comedies when he portrays Hitler. The three stooges are basically a mitosis of a typical Charlie Chaplin character, and that does not look like a serious threat to me. Charlie Chaplin has a very quirky style.
Chaplin’s style has a few interesting key techniques. In order to replicate his style, you need to get his walk down. He walks with his feet perpendicular and pointing outward. Doing this will be accompanied by a tendency to kick slightly and lean back as you walk. Walking like this in public will make people think you are drunk or just a creeper. Most of his humor is physical, like falling down or picking fights with inanimate objects. The idea of picking a fight with an inanimate object more specifically reefers to having difficulties with various contraptions. For instance, in the beginning of the Great Dictator, Chaplin portrays a soldier in WWI who tries to load a cannon, but he has some problems operating the mechanism. Another classic example from a different film is when his coat gets hooked on a nail on a swiveling table. Then he tries to get a glass on the other side of the table.
Chaplin mostly had experience with silent movies and so he still used much of that same physical comedy. Another sign of this movie being an early sound movie is the fact that some sounds are missing. Doors shut soundlessly. No sound is heard as combat boots march across gravel to a plane. I think that biplane was the infamous German stealth baron. Its engine had an inaudible drone.
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3 comments:
That was a great post. You really showed how this film connected to 1930s America, and even connected it to personal experience. I also liked how you used examples from the film itself to back up your claims. You even gave a little behind the scenes incite.
I don’t think you necessarily had to only point out specific example of physical comedy, and that you probably could have shown other examples of other types of humor he uses. Also, I would have talked about the types of misen-sen that Chaplin uses (how does he direct) and what else can you say about his style (other than the fact that he uses slapstick). That’s just my opinion.
I like how you pointed out the simalarities of this movie and American history itself. I agree that Hitler is portrayed as a bit of a pushover in the film. I would have liked to read more about that and less about the physical humor used throughout the film. However,the physical element is very important as well. I think even though sound was available to Chaplain, he prefered to really show story through actions rather than words.
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