The Great Dictator: Chaplin’s Act of Artistic Nobility | Dissident Cinema

0:00Adam Kempenaar:We'll see you next time.

0:30Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20 % year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the S &P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks.

1:02Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash podcast. Paid for by Public Investing. Brokered services by Open to the Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA, and SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures.

1:30This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Business software is expensive. And when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing, slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting, all linked and talking to each other.

2:08Check out Odoo at O-D-O-O dot com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Less support through telehealth, but it feels overwhelming and rushed. Check out orderlymeds.com now. Now, orderlymeds.com was built to be different. Here, you connect with real doctors who take the time to understand your goals, review your eligibility, and guide you through a plan that's right for you. Orderly Meds provides access to proven GLP-1 medications like semaglutide and terzepatide, including both name brand options and personalized compound versions when appropriate. So you have choices backed by clinical oversight, not guesswork.

2:45It's a simpler, more supportive telehealth experience designed around people who want clarity, care, and confidence in their weight loss journey. And your medication is delivered directly to your home in discreet packaging, so your experience stays private from start to finish. Do your research. Ask the right questions. Then visit orderlymeds.com slash podcast for an exclusive offer. Again, that's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Individual results may vary. Not medical advice. Eligibility required. See site for details. Film Spotting is presented by Regal Unlimited, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits.

3:23See any standard 2D movie anytime with no blackout dates or restrictions. Sign up now on the Regal app or at the link in our description and use code FILMSPOT26 to receive 15 % off.

3:40What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today? You're not interested in art? No. Now look, we're going to do this thing. We're going to have a conversation.

3:48Adam Kempenaar:Hey, film spotters. Here we go. The official commencement of our dissident cinema marathon. We're beginning with Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.

4:02Does this remind you of anything? Why, of course you recognize him. It's Adenoid Hinkle, the phooey of Tomania.

4:15Adam Kempenaar:I bet you recognize him, too. It's Charlie, the wonderful, the extraordinary Charlie Chaplin. What is the dissident cinema marathon, you might ask? Well, the way we described it concisely, Josh, was movies that critically depict or fight fascist governments. I can't imagine where you came up with this topic or why. I don't know. I mean, it just seemed like it was in the air somehow in the United States. So, yeah, I thought, let's look at some of these movies that have dealt with these sorts of oppressive regimes in the past and respond to them artistically and see what we can pull from them. We put together a six-film lineup with the help of film spotting listeners, mainly picking the topic was something we needed film spotting listeners for, in particular, the film spotting family.

5:07Adam Kempenaar:The film spotting advisory board helped us get down to four marathon finalists. I think we mentioned this on the show, but briefly, I'll say it again. We may get to these topics at some point. They were Dissident Cinema, Post-War Japanese Cinema, Beyond Kurosawa and Ozu, The Actress' Studio. So looking at members of The Actress' Studio, Method Actresses, and Brazilian Cinema, all really good topics. And apparently, Josh, our voters, FilmSpotting family members who voted and ranked them, they liked all of them because those last three I mentioned, post-war Japanese cinema, Actresses Studio, and Brazilian cinema, were all within 0.44 of each other, all nestled really closely together.

5:48Adam Kempenaar:But up there at number one, a pretty clear winner was Dissident Cinema. And we decided to go in order here, start with the Chaplin film because it is the earliest film, 1940. Coming up next, we have Rome Open City from Rossellini, Kurosawa's No Regrets for Our Youth, Kostogavra's Z, The Sorrow and the Pity from Ophel's. That will be the 1969 film. And then we are going to jump up ahead to Jafar Panahi's 2000 film, The Circle. This is a movie we mentioned is not available anywhere on DVD, anywhere streaming. Hard to see. Usually then something we take off the list or don't include in a marathon because we want these to be movies that everyone widely can participate in and do their homework and watch along with us.

6:41Adam Kempenaar:But you mentioned, Josh, it seems like an important film, this Iranian movie. I love Panahi. I do want to see this movie, A Blind Spot. It's one that you might be able to get through your local library. Not only that, I'm going to go ahead and say this on air and I won't say anything else just in case it might get me in trouble. I have had a listener to say, there are links online in which you can see this entire movie and they don't involve you going to the outer reaches and dark parts of the internet to do so let's leave it at that so in other words i think we can watch the circle and keep it in our marathon very excited for that yes and all of these i think it's a wide range it's a you know stretch of history uh so yeah and this starting with The Great Dictator, this was one of the curiosities, the great curiosities of cinema for me that I had never taken the time to look at for some reason.

7:42And so the marathon was partly an excuse to push me to do that.

7:48Adam Kempenaar:I'm glad I had a chance to revisit it. I've mentioned I saw this movie back as a film student. I took an entire class devoted to silent comedies. And it was mainly, of course, Chaplin versus Keaton. That was the course effectively. It was all Chaplin films and all Keaton movies. I did not remember, it turns out, almost anything about this film. It truly was as I expected watching it. It was like watching it for the first time. All I had in my head from the movie was the famous scene of Hinkle, Chaplin as Hinkle, as the Fui doing the German gibberish scene, giving the speech. That was the only thing I remembered.

8:51Adam Kempenaar:And so in my mind, if I'm being totally honest, I wasn't as excited about seeing the great dictator as probably I should have been because that was what it conjured for me. And while I thought I had a recollection of that being fairly funny, it didn't necessarily seem as biting to me or the satire as sharp and intelligent. And I wasn't I wasn't then feeling like I have to go back and visit the great dictator, which I will note it was nominated for five Academy Awards. Outstanding Production was one of them. Chaplain is producer. Chaplain is best actor. Original screenplay. Chaplain, best supporting actor.

9:39Adam Kempenaar:Went to Jack Oakey. And I'm going to confess, I don't even know who he plays in this movie. that's a name i didn't look that character up so napoloni the dictator of bacteria so the mussolini stand-in essentially yes that makes sense as soon as you said it and then best music the original score from meredith wilson so i didn't totally know what to expect with those relatively low expectations josh and i will say this it it far exceeded my expectations this revisit we we according to my viewing we are off to a wonderful rousing start with the great dictator great i love it i love that you had that response i think that i had similar strangely enough similar expectations to your memories in that i've seen you know the clip of the scene you mentioned and maybe a few others and i think it's regarded has been regarded as a lesser chaplain film by many as a later though not late career but later career effort that might have been where things started to take a downturn that was what i thought i was going to get and what i found i will say i said it was a great curiosity because of those factors like what could this weird chaplain movie be having seen it it's still a curiosity this is a strange movie an incredibly strange movie i think in some ways it could be regarded a folly i found it to be and this is what's interesting about doing this marathon now i think adam is we're looking at these movies through a very particular urgent, I would argue, lens.

11:34I ultimately found this while being ungainly in some ways, the mix of serious speechifying and chaplain-esque humor, maybe having elements of bad taste we can get into, finding comedy in certain situations that are, you know, otherwise appalling. I think it ultimately for me registered as an act of artistic nobility. This was someone, man, Chaplin was not messing around in 1940. And we have the perspective now to say that there were a lot of people messing around in 1940, not wanting to call a spade a spade, not wanting to confront what was coming. And here is Chaplin firmly ensconced in the Hollywood filmmaking system at this point.

12:25So American coming from an American vantage point, even as you know someone originally from the UK and he was saying this is scary this is abhorrent and I'm going after this guy in his party with everything I've got and what I've got is comedy and he added on top of that as I suggested a lot of earnest speech making and I'll be curious to hear how that worked for you, that combination. But yeah, I think I mostly came away just feeling like, you know, looking at where we're at now, where I've been so just mortified by reputable news organizations for the last 10 years, not willing to just bending over backward, trying not to describe a wannabe American dictator as such, right?

13:18Doing everything they can to not just say what we all see. And there was something invigorating about watching an artist in 1940 calling a spade a spade. And doing it in ways that were very funny. This is a very funny film as well.

13:33Adam Kempenaar:Under the new emblem of the double cross, liberty was banished, free speech was suppressed, and only the voice of Hinkle was heard.

13:45So I guess I'd mostly like to hear from you how that mixture of, you know, earnest speech making and amusing chaplain comedy worked.

13:57Adam Kempenaar:When you said what I've got is comedy and I'm going to use that, I'm going to wield that cudgel effectively. What he's got is comedy. What he's got is a soapbox. In this case, the soapbox is a studio that's going to release his picture. He's got enough power to get a movie made and get a movie released and he's got a microphone. He's literally got a talking picture and he's got a microphone. And that does mean that the movie is also literally going to end with him making a speech in front of that microphone and speaking directly to the American people. Does that at the end in particular, does that go too far?

14:40Adam Kempenaar:I'll get to that in a moment, perhaps. But to your point about it being at times a folly, I do think that that is applicable. But for me, what surprised me, what genuinely sort of startled me about watching The Great Dictator was how little of a folly I felt it was, how prescient it certainly was, how precise it was, how prudent it was, noble I love that term how rational it was I mean I could go on and on with different different types of words like that I did think watching it especially at the end thought Josh is going to struggle a bit with the speechifying and I did at the end and where I'm less forgiving of it or why I'm less forgiving of it at the end in particular is because it's there that it exists almost completely outside the realm of the movie.

15:46Adam Kempenaar:Unless I'm misremembering, once the barber hits the microphone, it's a close-up, and the only purpose is to speak directly to the audience, and it's to deliver a moral as thoroughly as possible. There's no cuts to other characters. It's just on Chaplin. And it takes us out completely of the movie. It's just it's just for him to get on his soapbox and talk into the microphone. I'm sorry. I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible. Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that.

16:28We want to live by happiness, not by each other.

16:31Adam Kempenaar:I'm forgiving generally, Josh, because, yeah, Chaplin was a comedian taking a risk by making such a political film and was a silent comedian making his first true talkie. There's ambition there, but I'm not just grading on a curve. I'll go back to those words I was using. It's how acute Chaplin is with his commentary, how incisively he understands and portrays the folly. I'll use the word of political gamesmanship. Now we all get the idea of wagging the dog. But back when he's making this film in 1939, 1940, for him to understand it as well as he does. Yeah. For example, the character. Garbage, the advisor to Hinkle later when he says to him, we might go a little further with the Jews, burn down some of their houses, a spectacular assault on the ghetto now might prove diverting.

17:32Adam Kempenaar:And Hinkle says, we must do something more dramatic. Now's the time to invade Osterlech. I think we're all thinking the same thing when we hear that line about our current situation and other situations that have mirrored situations like that. back then though not that there weren't scholars or others who have written about situations that had predated that but i just think we're inundated with that now in our culture over the past 50 to 70 years it's easy to think like that for chaplain at that time to understand it as clearly as he did as clear-eyed as he did and as clear-eyed as he expresses it in this film is something and i'll give you one more 20 plus years before hannah arendt gave the world the the banality of evil you have henry daniel that character garbage and have you seen anyone josh better capture the vampiric visage of steven miller better than this guy like i think steven miller might have watched i think steven miller actually has seen the great dictator probably 37 times but he cut out every scene that wasn't scenes with garbage and and hinkle and he's just studied those scenes closely so we understood power and diversion and how to be a dictator it's like a it's like a manual on how to be a dictator playbook and and so yeah right 20 plus years before we understand that idea before we really understand and could put a phrase on it the banality of evil.

19:12Adam Kempenaar:Now here is where we get the line coming off the stage. Hinkle, proud of himself. How was I? Garbage. The speech? Yes. Very good. I thought your reference to the Jews might've been more violent. And he says, what? And I'll get to, I'll get later to, I'm on, I'm on Hinkle's side when he says what? Cause he kind of can't believe it. And garbage says, we've got to rouse people's anger. Cause he was up there frothing at the I thought it was genuinely chilling and in garbage responds by saying we've got to rouse the people's anger at this time. Violence against the Jews might take the public's mind off its stomach.

19:53Adam Kempenaar:I'll just say again, we we've now studied this. We've studied the the rise of fascism in Germany. We understand it so well now. I am in awe of how well Chaplin understood it then and brought it to the screen. It's all there. And just to emphasize your point with a little timeline context, so The Great Dictator came out a full year before the U.S. entered World War II, okay? Yes. And it came out, here's the thing that shocked me when I was actually putting this, laying this out on a timeline. It was only a year after Germany invaded Poland that Chaplin made this. Now, again, this isn't to say that he's the first person to say these things.

20:41Obviously, there were, you know, scholars and others well informed about this. But the fact that he had, to your point, the grasp of the situation and took the artistic risk to turn it into a movie when he was not known necessarily for these types of films. Now, does it work as a film? We can admire the wisdom. We can admire the risk that he took, the boldness. Does it work as a film? Here's where I think it works. He realized there's a crucial thing about calling out a dictator, whether it's Hitler or someone like we're living with. You call him out as an idiot because as a comedian, this is what Chaplin's going to be able to do.

21:36Lampoon the inherent silliness. And I want to be clear that horrific violence also comes with fascism, right? But good Lord, is it silly? If you can step back and look at it, the puffery, the pageantry, the needing of arches and ballrooms and your face on every fricking thing anyone looks at. This is all silliness. And so it takes a comedian to spoof all of this self-important buffoonery that to my mind is really just an attempt to mask a lack of moral authority. And this is a huge target for Chaplain. And he goes at it with the stuff you mentioned, the Germanic gibberish in the speeches, which I only knew Chaplin's silent stuff.

22:26I think he's incredibly funny verbally here. He is. And in these speeches, right? But it's also like, it's everything from the limp salute he gives. It's like he half believes in the Heil Heinkel. Right. And it's just undercutting the ridiculousness of even having a personalized salute. Who needs a personalized salute? Heinkel's tiny temper tantrums that he's spoofing the ludicrousness. And then my favorite bit is this long scene where he finds himself alone in his office with this globe. And this is just after he and Garbage have been talking about their plans to take over the world, right? And what does he do?

23:11He lifts up the globe. It turns out it's a balloon and he has this like balletic routine that is, it's actually impressive in its dexterity. It's so impressive. But it's also this grown man in a military uniform, like kind of making love with a balloon. A fascist dictator. Yeah. And it's just, it's deflating. Right. It's deflating like warmongering as a childish whim. And so it's amusing, it's dexterous, and it's very politically pointed. And in those moments, I'm thinking it does work as a movie. It does work as a movie. And maybe I'll give it those speeches and, you know. Sure. Okay. Okay. But in these moments, it's really clicking.

23:53You've never been one to settle, stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner, energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you. You can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now? Not a chance. At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive.

24:17Adam Kempenaar:Now, go earn the degree. Capella University, what can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20 % year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the S &P 500.

24:54Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash podcast. Paid for by Public Investing. Brokered services by Open to the Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA and SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice.

25:21Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures. This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Business software is expensive. And when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing, slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting, all linked and talking to each other.

26:02Check out Odoo at O-D-O-O dot com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Are you trying to get weight loss support through telehealth, but it feels overwhelming and rushed? Check out OrderlyMeds.com now. OrderlyMeds.com was built to be different. Here, you connect with real doctors who take the time to understand your goals, review your eligibility, and guide you through a plan that's right for you. Orderly Meds provides access to proven GLP-1 medications like semaglutide and terzepatide, including both name brand options and personalized compound versions when appropriate. So you have choices backed by clinical oversight, not guesswork.