The Great Dictator - "Airplanes and Radios"

The Great Dictator (1940)

K: I think it's important to note that this movie is Charlie Chaplin's first talkie (and it's our first post on "Talkies").

H: We watched City Lights (1931) a while ago and it's interesting to note the similarities more so than the differences between the two movies. For one, the little tramp character is in both. But more than that, as for sound, I don't think the fact that Charlie Chaplin's characters can now speak is a dramatic change. The dictator and the tramp could be silent with occasional speech screens and still have the same effect, because much of the physical silent style humor of "City Lights" is in this movie.One example is the opening sequence of the misfiring gun. Chaplin goes several minutes without talking and I wondered if his character would talk at all or if Chaplin even knew he was in a talkie. Of course, later on he does talk.

K: I agree with a lot of what you're saying, however I believe that Chaplin understands the importance of sound - first with music and then with dialogue. I agree with your tramp statements. When he speaks as the dictator, when he uses sauerkraut or cheese and crackers, I don't think you could do those jokes in a silent film because those sounds are funny, those words are funny words. So I think that the dictator character, which is supposed to be intimidating, has this humorous sound coming out of his mouth which makes him funny and, not surpassing slapstick but, being his first talkie, brings language to that level of slapstick.

H: That's a good point about all of the verbal and audible humor. I think I tended to gloss over the faux-German speeches after a while because they were for the most part the same joke - German is a funny language and Hitler (Hynkel), being a madman, was a little too adamant in this silly language. What stuck for me was the physical comedy reminiscent of "City Lights" - the dictator jumping up on the curtain (although that was punctuated by some funny dialogue), all of the very public clumsiness, and him playing with the globe balloon. So, aside from the funny speeches by the dictator, what other audible humor rose to the level of the physical stuff? For instance, he doesn't use sound effects at all, and I for one appreciate that, because sound effects can be annoying and are hard to use successfully.

K: One point - every time they slap somebody, there was a sound effect. It wasn't annoying and it was a sound effect used in the film.

H: I didn't notice the slapping sounds. Maybe Chaplin in his first talkie was already able to handle sound effects pretty seamlessly.

K: Chaplin is graceful on film. In "City Lights", the restaurant scene with his rich friend by night proves how well he can move. "The Great Dictator" lives up to that with the balloon scene you mentioned. I was really impressed with that scene. It was well shot and it felt like one take. No one was watching him. He was doing something so private that we were able to see. It felt like you were peeking in on this gleeful little dictator. He proves how graceful he is with words by his end speech. He does the same thing. His speech seems so private and he works so well with words and vocally, not as the silly German dictator but as the tramp. This is growth for him as an artist. I think his speech embodies that growth.

H: What exactly is the artistic growth that you see in the speech at the end?

K: He talks about humankind and machines that enable us to communicate with each other faster and better (airplanes and radios). As an artist, he's putting those innovations to use and growing as an artist from those.

H: So he's growing because he's able to talk about airplanes and radios on airplanes and radios? What you're also getting at is the message behind the last speech. When we talked earlier offline, you mentioned that the speech wasn't really coming from the tramp character, but from Chaplin because of its sincerity and its optimism. You're getting at the essence of his speech - there's new technology out there, there are some old sins that it can either help to erase (greed, lust for power, divisions among humankind) or strengthen to a dangerous degree (the Nazi killing machine).

I want to go back to the fact that Chaplin gets more verbal as the movie progresses. At the start, the tramp hardly says anything and the dictator talks a lot, but what the dictator says has literally no substance. At the end, the dictator still says nothing of substance (meaning no character growth), but the tramp gives a highly literate speech on brotherhood, etc that is the longest string of uninterrupted dialogue in the whole movie.

K: This tramp character has been in a lot of silent movies. Imagine your favorite character being silent the whole time you've known them. It makes sense that he doesn't talk a lot at the start. You have to get comfortable with seeing him silent before you can accept him talking. We have the privilege of seeing tramp movies in any order, whereas the audience of those days had to see the chronological progression. So, seeing the tramp quiet and then being promised the tramp talking matters a lot. Having him silent in the first few minutes and wondering if he'll talk makes the progression to the speech more moving.

H: So it gives weight to the speech and therefore the message of the speech.

K: As far as the dictator and his growth/change, he doesn't need to change because Chaplin was able to play the dictator role as he wanted without "Chaplin" being the dictator. "Chaplin" got to be the tramp. The dictator he plays is just a caricature of the 1939 Hitler as America understood him, not as history sees him now.

Talking about the sincerity of his speech, it doesn't feel like the characters break the fourth wall on purpose. Every time they're directed to do so, it must be to show the sincerity of Chaplin's message. This feels like an ok use of this device.

H: Do you think it's problematic that this movie gets filed down to a preachy point about technology and its possibilities, both positive and negative? Usually, we reward movies that show reality as complex and not easily distilled into a singular message. This being a comedy in the dramatic sense where everything should work out, does that justify the sunny disposition and unbridled optimism at the end?

K: Chaplin understands his abilities as an artist, and that's to be funny. He didn't set out to make a dramatic movie, but a funny one. The message of the movie isn't dated and it's applicable to today, so it's ok that it's preachy.

H: What if "Royal Tennanbaums" ended with a speech that said family is important so you should look past people's quirks? Of course that would be terrible. What is it about this movie that makes it ok? I agree with you that it is ok, but I'm not entirely sure why.

K: Wes Anderson never had to make a silent movie. Chaplin made a lot of silent movies. How exciting to be able to use sound and to use it to send a message!

H: But shouldn't he use sound to weave a complex narrative where reality and values are uncertain and each story presents circumstances such that you can't judge people or their actions in bulk? Maybe it's because of the newness of sound as a platform and technology for Chaplin that he couldn't go from "City Lights" (by the way does it have an overt message?) to "Schindler's List" in one stroke. There are certainly examples of complex morality from the same time - "Casablanca", noir films in general.

K: Chaplin created United Artists which produced this film, he wrote it, he directed it, he starred in the two major roles - it's his movie. If he wants to use sound to make a big speech at the end, more power to him. I don't think we realize how exciting it was at that time? It would be like if we watched the Simpsons for twenty years without sound and then to hear them - it would be really exciting.

H: Let me propose that as an audience, we don't expect comedies to present present a complex reality.

K: The movie shows that dictators try to simplify reality for their own ends. Chaplin shows "real" reality in the scene where a man resisting arrest is shot in the ghetto. The dictator and the tramp are notably absent from that scene and don't have to respond to it. He doesn't make his characters react to it, he presents it to the audience for reaction.

H: So the simplistic natures of both the tramp and the dictator aren't capable of responding to death and other actual realities of life and the Nazi nightmare. Is this Chaplin showing us his limitations as an artist since the people he plays can't deal?

K: In "City Lights", the tramp prevents a suicide. That's pretty heavy.

H: But the tramp stumbles upon the man attempting suicide and doesn't seem to comprehend the severity of the situation.

K: ...until the end when the tramp tells the man something about the birds will sing.

H: Ok, so the tramp is pretty much Sartre in disguise. I've reconsidered in a way - Chaplin is granting the audience the responsibility of reacting to the speeches and occasional grim events.

K: If he wanted a cheap reaction, he would have Jaeckel do it. Other movies do that. They audience off easy and deflect the reaction to a character.

H: Chaplin is ultimately giving us the responsibility of responding to ultimate evil. We've all heard and been part of discussions about those directly and indirectly responsible for the Holocaust.

Shall we talk about what birds mean to Chaplin? The troubling scene where the camera focuses on a bird a cage while sounds of people being beaten by the storm troopers is pretty interesting, and again speaks to the depth that Chaplin is capable of.

K: There are the obvious things the bird in this movie and in "City Lights" represents - freedom, music, beauty.

H: Ok, what about all of the piano playing the dictator does in the movie? Sometimes I feel like he must have felt, trying to steal away and practice my art in spite of my job.

K: It felt like behind the dictator there was an artist and that this man can create both madness and music. Chaplin is an artist. There's a similarity between artists and dictators. You can create greed or something to better humankind.

H: There's the whole Hitler as a painter before mass murderer thing. The artist as dictator really fits. The artist can try to control a reality. The dictator tries to control others' realities. The tramp suggests an alternate reality to the dictator's.

The tramp was also an artist in the sense that he's a barber and can bring out beauty in the ordinary by washing his girlfriend's face and doing her hair.

K: The most effective dictator piano scene is the short one that followed the scene where the tramp watched his barber shop burn.
It was a really good transition. It went from the dictator ordering the storm troopers to cause havoc to the dictator playing the piano.

H: Did his playing the piano following his orders link his art to his violence? So, you can't say, he would have been a great artist had he not been a dictator. The thing that made him as a pianist necessitated his dictatorial nature?

On a different note, this movie seems to use height in interesting ways in jokes. There's the globe balloon, the dictator climbing up the curtains, the chair wars between the dictator and Napaloni, the tramp in the airplane and manning the guns, the tramp on the roof, etc. It seems that whenever the tramp is down and out, he's in the air whereas the dictator seeks out the heights on purpose and seems to be at his best. There's also the explicit talk by Garbage about the psychology of heights.

K: I don't know if the dictator was at his best when he was high, but he had the idea that if he were higher, things would be better for him. The tramp proves that to be false.

H + K: This movie was excellent, it was superb, very good, good.