Jews Still Divided Over Chaplin's "The Great Dictator"

Frederick Raphael, writing in Commentary, applauds it:

The Great Dictator, Chaplin’s 1940 tale of a Jewish barber who is the spitting image of a barely fictionally disguised Hitler (and his first talking picture), was made against the advice of all the Hollywood studio heads, almost all of them Jews. It was not flawless, but it probably did more to alert the world to Hitler’s grotesque megalomania than any number of solemn denunciations. The last speech in the picture, when Chaplin “takes off his mask and speaks for himself was,” Ackroyd opines, “perhaps an artistic mistake; he declares for example that ‘the hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people.’” Abraham Lincoln might have found no great fault in this echo of his own sentiments, but Ackroyd concludes, with false majesty: “No film should end with a magniloquent rehearsal of what were essentially conventional sentiments.” 

Since there are no specific notes, I cannot say what source authorizes this statement: “Hitler himself saw The Great Dictator. An official from the film division of the German Ministry of Culture told Chaplin, after the war, that the Führer ‘insisted on seeing the film—alone. The next night, he saw the film again, and once more alone.’” Ackroyd leaves it at that; but imagine (as a great actor might) what expression Hitler wore as he watched “himself” as a clown of genius turn bully-boy brutality into slapstick (would it had been so!) and anti-Semitic rant into hilarious gobbledygook. 

With what kind of a face did Adolf watch Jack Oakie’s superb parody of Adolf’s one-time model, Benito Mussolini, in the form of Benzino Napaloni? Surely the Führer had to laugh at that, even if he could not laugh at his “double” mirrored up there. The two men with silly black moustaches were, as it happened, born within a few days of each other. It says something for the egomaniac Chaplin’s artistic taste that he allowed Oakie’s scene-stealing vignette to stay in the movie at all. When did the Führer allow himself to be upstaged, even for a moment?

Ron Rosenbaum, on the other hand, thinks it did a great deal of harm:

Chaplin’s meretricious and in fact genuinely, historically damaging The Great Dictator is a film I’d seen long before focusing on this book and had taken for granted the conventional wisdom and knee-jerk approbation. And forgotten it. But its “courage” is one of those myths that really needs re-examining because it persists to this day. The myth that The Great Dictator was a bold challenge to Hitler or that it somehow damaged his cause. Quite the opposite. 

It may be too late, but I feel an obligation to set the record straight. I’m recalling now how shocked I was when, after being invited to “present” a showing of it at the Harvard Film Archives, I actually watched it for the first time in years.  

It was shocking on two levels. First, the fact that in his alleged anti-Hitler satire, who does Chaplin blame for the hostility his Hitler character has for the Jews? Jewish bankers! Jewish bankers turned down the Great Dictator and it’s all about getting even with those Jews. The Jews’ misfortune was their own fault, in effect. That’s the explanation Chaplin’s film left in its audience’s mind — probably the first impression much of America had. In addition, the impression that Hitler was a harmless joke, nothing to worry about. That’s what he told America at that crucial moment in October 1940 when the film was released. People seem to forget this when they get all misty-eyed about how great The Great Dictator is.  

It’s fascinating that the film-buff community is so blinkered by apolitical estheticism they never speak of this when heaping unwarranted praise on this mendacious film. Or do they just not want us to notice the “Jewish banker” moment so we can appreciate the great genius without reservation?  

But the real damage of this alleged satire was done at the time of its release, in its successful trivialization of Hitler. Chaplin trivialized his “Great Dictator” by “revealing” what a sentimental, foolish softy he was, gracefully juggling a globe balloon as if his desire to rule the world were a beautiful delusion. Nothing to be seriously alarmed by. Not a threat that required resistance. Just the Little Tramp being a little bit mean to the Jews...

 I think I'm with Ron on this one.