In part 1 of this review, I explained that Charlie Chaplin expressed regret at having made The Great Dictator, claiming that such a project would’ve been unthinkable if he’d had any knowledge of the atrocities that had occurred at Auschwitz. The history of cinema appears to have vindicated Chaplin on this score: the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup and Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not To Be, both riotously funny anti-Nazi films, were, like Chaplin’s film, finished well before reports of the extermination camps appeared in American newspapers. In contrast, many post-WWII films that have tried to skewer Nazism, including Life is Beautiful, Inglourious Basterds, and Jojo Rabbit, have been startlingly unfunny and generally repugnant. Made with full historical knowledge of the Nazi holocaust, these works all downplay or trivialize the horrors of genocide, swinging back and forth between gruesome violence (played for laughs) and sickly-sweet sentimentality.
Unlike Chaplin, the creators of these works failed to grasp the particular social and material conditions that gave rise to the Third Reich. While the superficial ridiculousness of the Nazis may merit contemptuous laughter, comedy writers have often struggled to reconcile Hitler’s buffoonery with the systematic and unique methods that made it possible to wage a genocidal world war. This is because they largely neglect the fact that Nazism represented a terminal crisis of global capitalism, with the system’s numerous contradictions having reached an unprecedented level of cruel absurdity. While many historians, journalists, and political theorists have echoed this view on the origins of Nazism, it has often been conveniently ignored by Hollywood. Following the McCarthyist period and widespread purges of left-wing figures in the entertainment industry, American films have tended to rewrite the history of WWII, absolving the capitalist system of the decisive role it played in the rise of the Third Reich. Chaplin bowed to no such pressure, even after the political tides affecting American culture shifted under his feet.
In The Great Dictator, the unholy marriage between industrial capitalism and the fascist state is satirized in one underrated but richly complex scene. Propaganda minister Garbitsch visits Dictator Hynkel (Chaplin) in his office and informs him that, due to mass unrest among Tomanian workers, part of the munitions budget has been reappropriated to build prison camps. The blackly funny exchange continues thus:
HYNKEL: What do they dissent about?
GARBITSCH: The working hours. The cut in wages. Chiefly, the synthetic food – the quality of the sawdust in the bread.
HYNKEL: What more do they want? It’s from the finest lumber our mills can supply.
These few lines contain profound and disturbing historical truths. The Nazis led a massive assault on the German working class when they rose to power. Independent unions were banned, the right to strike and collective bargaining were outlawed, and communists & socialists of all kinds were murdered or imprisoned. The Nazis, striking at the heart of Europe’s labor movement, were doing the bidding of Germany’s financial and political elite. These influential capitalists, fearful of the international socialist movement (Germany’s leftist parties were growing in popularity, and the Russian Revolution had recently shaken the foundations of global capitalism) entered a Faustian pact with the Nazis. The chemical plant IG Farben, Krupp Steel, and the coal industrialist Emil Kirdorf all provided crucial financial support to the Nazis in order to ensure the domination and subjugation of the German working class. The exchange that follows this is similarly revealing:
GARBITSCH: The people are overworked. They need diversion.
HYNKEL: The people? Bah!
GARBITSCH: We might go a little further with the Jews. Burn down some of their houses. Spectacular assault on the ghetto might prove diverting.
The scapegoating of Jews, more than just a product of Hitler’s ideologically-driven racial hatred, was another valuable service Nazism rendered on behalf of the German and European bourgeoisie. The age of imperialism and advanced industrial capitalism had brought about enormous advances in art, culture, and technology. At the same time, this seemingly limitless growth was accompanied by unprecedented levels of destruction. The First World War, launched in the name of economic and colonial expansion, produced a maimed, immiserated German working class. This was a decisive factor in the growing popularity of socialist and communist parties throughout Europe. The Nazis’ propaganda addressed the very real suffering and privation of the workers, and in doing so was able to peel away crucial support from the socialist and communist parties. At the same time, they deliberately falsified the cause of this suffering. By placing the blame squarely on Jews and pacifists, the Nazis made it possible for the agents of capitalism and imperialism to maintain their control over the world. Hynkel and Garbitsch exemplify those tactics in this very exchange: when the people get angry, misdirect their anger towards a scapegoat, then attack that scapegoat viciously.
Hynkel soon asserts his desire to invade the neighboring country of Osterlich, but there’s a snag: they lack the operating capital to launch the invasion, and no banker is willing to offer a loan. However, there is one possible exception: Epstein, a Jew. Obtaining this loan might be difficult, says Garbitsch, “in view of our policy towards his people.” Hynkel immediately agrees to a change in this policy…at least until the loan has been acquired. This is another example of how the Nazis were driven by far more than fanatical Jew-hatred. Like any force that is ruthless in its quest for power, the Nazis needed to make concessions and compromises in order to achieve their aims. This exchange also shows how little the Nazis valued ideological consistency, and helps debunk the absurd notion that ‘the Nazis were socialists’ in any meaningful sense. While the Nazis made limited attempts to exert state control over German enterprise, their regime never seriously threatened capitalism, as it never could’ve risen to and remained in power without the economic support of German capitalists.
The rousing speech at the film’s conclusion has been interpreted by some as an attack on capitalism itself, although this remains a contentious topic. “Although Chaplin intended a humanitarian message,” writes biographer Jeffrey Vance, “many critics at the time found the speech evocative of communist rhetoric and ideology.” Chaplin declares that “the people have the power to create machines, the power to create happiness…let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security.” Also notable is his call “to do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.” According to Vance, the filmmaker was evasive when asked about the communist undertones of this speech. Chaplin referred to it as his opportunity to “make a curtain speech: ‘say ladies and gentlemen, there’s a tragedy going on.’ That’s all I wanted to do, metaphorically.”
Chaplin, who had made an anti-Nazi film at a time when America was officially neutral in WWII, soon found himself accused of insufficient patriotism by the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Chaplin denied the committee’s accusations of communism, but he openly denounced their attack on artistic freedom and refused to ‘name names’ of fellow film workers. In 1952, following a trip to London, his re-entry permit to the US was revoked by the United States Attorney General. Aware of the political motivation behind his persecution, Chaplin elected to remain in Europe, and did not return to the United States for nearly 25 years.
Despite the artistic censorship imposed at the onset of the Cold War, Chaplin continued to attack capitalism in his films. Monsieur Verdoux pointed to the profit motive and the irrational market as the driving forces behind social violence, while A King in New York lambasted the McCarthyist witch trials. Looking back, we can see disturbing parallels between Chaplin’s time and ours: government meddling in the creative process, a return of blacklisting, and a list of ‘taboo’ topics that must be shunned. The artistic courage needed to challenge these repressive forces is, sadly, in short supply. Our best filmmakers ought to look to Chaplin for inspiration and guidance.
I commend his courage, but apart from that filmmakers can do far better than Chaplin as a role model. It’s no exaggeration to say that his talent lay in one area alone: The clown, The Tramp. He was a poor director, as Peter Bogdonovich amply noted, and his range was really limited to that role. And he knew it.
Metamorphosing The Tramp into Hynkle was brilliant, but he certainly never made another watchable frame of film after that.
On the main subject, let’s not forget The Producers, a very successful post war send up with Springtime For Hitler pulling no punches.
I think I'm right in saying Modern Times was banned in the Soviet Union. To my mind Chaplin was a socialist but in the tradition of say of William Morris. Closer to the anarchist tradition than the Marxist Leninist one. He saw the dehumanising nature of capitalism and condemned it but was by nature an artist.