Frame Study -‘The Great Dictator’ (by Charlie Chaplin)

Hello Beautiful People,

I am Riddhi Bhatt. And yes, today I am coming with something interesting.  This thinking activity task about Frame Study of ‘The Great Dictator’ by Charlie Chaplin. This is assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavsinhji Bhavangar University (MKBU).

As a part of syllabus, students of English department are learning the paper called History of English literature 1900-2000 (paper-110). So, let’s start friends. As we all know that this literature had a larger impact of industrialization and World War I and II. This particular blog is designed to read the frames of "The GreatDictator" movie. Directed, Produced and Written and Starred by the great Charlie Chaplin.

Charlie Chaplin is understood to have confided to his friends that, had he known about the full horrors of the Nazi regime, he would probably not have got around to making The Great Dictator. “There are things in our century that wipe away even the most poisonous smile from the face of the most passionate satirist,” wrote one of the 20th century’s foremost historians. He was referring to Karl Kraus, the great Austrian journalist-polemicist-satirist, whose book The Last Days of Mankind, written in the inter-war years, is a 20th-century classic.  When it came to lampooning National Socialism and Adolf Hitler, Kraus says, “nothing occurs to me”. A little later, he adds: “The word fell asleep when that world awoke.”

When the Holocaust became common knowledge, Chaplin must have also felt that his craft was inadequate to render Hitler’s world in any known cinematic genre – political satire or vaudeville, burlesque or tragedy. The Great Dictator was conceptualized and filmed when it was still possible to make fun of the Fuehrer.

“This is a story of a period between two World Wars—an interim in which Insanity cut loose. Liberty took a nosedive, and Humanity was kicked around somewhat.”

History	The Great Dictatir
Adolf Hitler (Dictator of Germany)	Adenoid Hynkel(Dictator of Tomainia)
Joseph Goebbels (Minister of Propaganda)	Garbitsch- Garbage
Hermann Goring (Minister of War)	Herring
Benito Mussolini (Dictator of Italy)	Benzino Napaloni(Dictator of Bacteria)

 

So let's start this Fram study of 'The Great Dictator'........

"Nothing in the film is quite as frightening as the sight and sound of the ludicrous Hynkel casually ordering the execution of three thousand striking workers.

Chaplin plays around marvellously with this crossover between rollicking humour and unmixed horror. Wood has pointed out how the harmless barber waving a razor over the bare throat of a customer looks more murderous than Hynkel ever does in the film. But the masterly mixing of the strains of Johannes Brahms’ ‘Hungarian Dance no 5’ into this edge-of-the-seat scene adds that piquancy which is signature Chaplin.

As masterful as the casual mixing of horror and humour is the blending of the ridiculous and the sublime in The Great Dictator. Gracefully, even tenderly, Hynkel performs the unforgettable balloon-ballet with Wagner’s ‘Lohengrin’ playing softly on the soundtrack. But then he slips on to a tabletop, and goes on bouncing the globe-balloon off his behind, with loving care, a dreamy, enchanted look frozen on his face. When finally he tries to get both his arms around the balloon, it bursts with a scream in his face.

 

The Jewish soldier who appears in the beginning of the film is presented as being completely inadequate and incapable of taking orders and behaving like a soldier should. For instance, the soldier is presented as unable to throw a grenade or to even detonate a grenade. Ironically, despite his incompetence, the Private is tasked with defusing a very complex bomb which eventually detonates anyway.

 

After Hynkel finished his speech, he was helped into his coat by another person on stage and then proceeds to head towards the stair and leave the stage. While Hynkel is on the top of the stairs, a fat dignitary bows down to salute another man and pushes Hynkel down the stairs in the process. While the scene is not witnessed by many, it is an ironic moment which has the purpose of transmitting the idea that politicians are only as powerful as those under them want them to be.

 

When the Private returns, he finds that the world he left changed completely. When he takes his shop back, a few soldiers appear almost immediately to paint the word ‘’Jew’’ on the windows. The Private tries to stand up against them but he quickly realizes that the men painting on his windows will not listen to him. The Private then gets into an argument with them and they start fighting under the window of Hannah who tries to save the Private by hitting the soldiers with a pan over their head. Ironically, the Private is also hit in the process and he almost passes out. When the Private went to tell the soldiers to stop, they started assaulting him. Scared, the Private runs into the arms of another soldier and asks for help, explaining that the other two men were beating him. Instead of helping the Private, the third soldier hit the Private and berated him for his actions. This image is used to portray the violence with which the Jews were treated by the Germans during the Second World War and also the instability they experienced every day.

When the movie starts, the main characters are on the battlefield, trying to destroy an important French landmark. When a bomb falls from the cannon and near the soldiers, no one is willing to go and check if it will explode. Three people come, one more powerful than the other and every person orders the next one in line to check the bomb until a normal soldier has the eventually take the risk. This image repeats itself and has the purpose of showing how during those times, the people who died were not the ones who gave out commands but rather the poor soldiers who could do nothing else except follow the orders given to them.

 

In another scene, Hynkel dictates an official note to a typist in a matter-of-fact manner. He is speaking aloud while she is taking it down on her typewriter. When Hynkel spouts a long, solemn sentence, she knocks out just a couple of letters. But when he offers only a monosyllable, she types furiously for several lines, clanging the machine as she works it intently. Hynkel looks on, amazed, but she remains completely unruffled, business-like. This playing-off of sound against meaning is an idea that could only have occurred to someone who was transitioning  from silent to talking films, but it is hard to imagine anyone else picturising it as brilliantly as Chaplin.

The Barber is already living in the ghetto, which is where the Jewish citizens of those countries under Hynkel's control had been sent, forced to leave their own homes and now living in far worse conditions. The Barber is then arrested and sent to a concentration camp. This is exactly what happened in German under Hitler's regime, and the way in which the Holocaust was able to gather steam and momentum is shown satirically by Chaplin in the movie.

Here we can see how Hynkel is mad for his photo and idol. He wants to have a photo and an idol everywhere and the name of Hynkel to be hailed all over the country. He wants to amaze everyone not with his work but with his photo and idol.

Sycophancy - Bhakti in politics is sure way towards dictatorship ….Here we see that how Charlie Chaplin ironically describe that Hero worship is the order of the day. It is no wonder that we are stuck with incompetent leaders, who are a disgrace, especially in the spiritual field. Have we lost our senses that we cannot have a balanced view. The person thus worshipped gets a false impression of his or her greatness and sooner or later falls down. The followers suffer greatly when such an event takes place. Not only does such hero worship hurt the followers, it hurts the person more. A person, who is too much in the limelight, may stop making further attempts to improve himself or herself, and just tries to bask in such attention. Another reason for hero worship is strong prejudice against others in the field. How can anyone ever imagine that a mere mortal is perfect in all respects and must be blindly followed

The central theme of the movie is Chaplin's own dislike for Adolf Hitler and his regime. This also extends to dictatorships in general; at the time, the rise of Fascism in Europe was deeply troubling, and there seemed to be many nations with a Fascist dictator at their helm. By lampooning Hitler, Chaplin drew attention to his many personality disorders, his despotism, his innate hatred for anyone not fitting his Aryan picture of the ideal human, and also the way in which he was not smart enough to develop his own policies and therefore relied on other, more dangerous minds to do this. He also draws attention to the fact that the German people were either mostly in agreement with Hitler, or extremely gullible in the way they fell hook, line and sinker for his rhetoric.

Did these similarities trouble Chaplin? Many believe they did, Chaplin’s own son telling us they actually haunted his father:

 "Dad could never think of Hitler except with a shudder, half of horror, half of fascination. “Just think,”’ he would say uneasily, “he’s the madman, I’m the comic. But it could have been the other way around.”

 Of course Hitler was not only a madman. Nor was Chaplin merely a comic. But in The Great Dictator, the intersection of insanity and laughter produced a memorable movie. Chaplin says he couldn’t have made the film except in 1938-39. We are grateful that he made it when he did.

Thank You...............

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