Charlie Chaplin learned comedy while working in vaudeville, and he went on to make genre comedies like many of his contemporaries. Compared to his peers Chaplin is sentimental in his story telling; he is more expressive, and his tramp character is lovable. As well as being a top-notch comedian and actor, Chaplin also directed the majority of his films. He was intelligent, and he was conscious of human suffering in the world around him. The times were hard for most people, the Great Depression provided troubles for people. He was gifted with an intuitive sense of cinema that let him make personal films, rich in humanity, when most movies were manufactured by a studio system that felt movies were a product and not art. Modern Times and The Great Dictator are two socially conscious films of his that have continued to find appreciative audiences.
Chaplin plays two roles in The Great Dictator, and each character has their own stories. The Dictator, Hynkel plans and plots to take over the neighboring country, and then the world; but he has to face several political and personnel problems that pop up. Meanwhile the Jewish Barber has to fight to survive; because Hynkel puts pressure on the Jews of Tomania, and is harassed by the Stormtroopers. The Barber is able to find love with Hannah, played by Paulette Godard. The end of the film has mistaken identities, caused by the fact that Hynkel and the Barber look so much alike; this was inspired by the fact that Hitler copied Chaplin’s mustache in real life. The ending of The Great Dictator has the Barber addressing a crowd of the dictator’s soldiers, and he gives them, and the whole world, a plea for peace. In this plea Chaplin stops acting as the Barber and speaks as himself; he stops speaking to the Tomanian troops and speaks to the citizens of the world. It is a beautiful and moving piece because Chaplin speaks his mind, and addresses his audience directly which few filmmakers do.
In The Great Dictator, while the Jewish Barber is in the hospital, after the first World War, time passes and the world changes drastically. To let the audience know that the world has changed since the end of the war, Chaplin uses a montage sequence. The screen fades from the Barber and his friend being told the war has been lost to whirling newspaper presses. The presses symbolize the gears and wheels of the world spinning, passing, and changing. Chaplin fades through different printing presses, and we see different shots of machines until a newspaper headline comes at us; “Armistice!” The camera fades into a crowd of happy people in the streets cheering the end of the war. Then the Barber is shown in the hospital, with his head bandaged. We are shown more headlines, many of them contemporary with Chaplin’s timeline, giving the audience a sense of time, “Lindberg flies Atlantic.” This is an attempt to speed the audience up to the present. The headlines show terrible times in the fictitious country of Tomania, which is a metaphor for Germany, and this helps us understand the last headline, “Hynkel Party Takes Power!” It parallels Hitler’s rise to power. The montage then shows us one last shot of the barber walking around so we know that he is in good health and alive, before giving us the film’s first shot of Hynkel. The montage sequence is important to the narrative because it gives the audience a greater sense of the timeline. For Chaplin’s original audience, it provided a brief history of the parallel world that he has created, wherein Hynkel stands in for Hitler. For modern audiences the montage gives them a greater understanding of the timeline, reminding and informing them of past events, letting the audience see the deplorable conditions of Tomania and how a person like Hynkel could rise to power. In less than a minute, several years worth of knowledge is given about the Barber and the conditions of Tomania.
The most beautiful and haunting sequences of The Great Dictator is when Hynkel dances with the globe, tossing it up into the air and gracefully catching it. Chaplin uses many long takes, and avoids cuts unless they are needed for an emotional affect, such as a close up of Hannah during Chaplin’s closing speech. In this sequence Hynkel tosses the globe. Rather than have the camera follow the globe up, the camera cuts to the globe and then follows it down. When you become used to this, the camera follows the globe up and then cuts to Chaplin lying down on the table. While it is not an extreme use of editing as many modern editors would use, it is subtly jarring. Hynkel is a pleasant person, but under the personality he is a violent brute. The quick subtle edits highlights this in Hynkel’s dance; he is dangerous. Finally, at the end of the sequence, he grabs the globe and it bursts, just as the Earth would have if Hynkel or Hitler would have conquered the Earth. In the most moving scene in The Great Dictator Chaplin uses little cuts for a greater emotional appeal. When he gives his speech and plea for humanity, which goes about five minutes, the camera cuts only once. Chaplin just stares straight into the camera for each whole take, breaking the “fourth wall” by looking at the audience. This contrasts with Hynkel’s dance and shows that Chaplin uses editing to highlight emotional aspects of the film.
The Great Dictator has a threatening yet humorous scene wherein Hynkel addresses members of the Jewish Ghetto through a loudspeaker. Chaplin speaks so it sounds like German, but it is just gibberish, and no translation is given. It is not what Hynkel is saying, but how he says it, that is threatening. We are set up in a previous scene where he states that he is going to threaten the Jews. While on the loudspeaker we see the Barber and Hannah reacting. They are on a crowded street when Hynkel’s voice booms in, and in seconds they are the last ones standing; everyone else has disappeared. The walk down the street at an increasing speed, but when Hynkel’s voice becomes more threatening they hide. There is no visible danger here, only the perception of Hynkel’s threat to them. The combination of the set-up, the sound production, and the acting make this sequence both frightening and hilarious.
Modern Times has plenty of plot and action by Chaplin’s design, compared to The Great Dictator the action veers away from the story. It is Godard’s urchin propels the Tramp into the next adventure. They dream of a future, and attempt to help each other. Chaplin tries to support her; declaring he will get her a home even if he has to work for it. It breaks off into events, going away from the story and into the plot; surviving the conditions of a city in 1930. We watch Chaplin working, imprisoned, and Godard as she works in a restaurant. Humor often works when the story and the plot diverge from the story, and perhaps this is why it was such a successful film. The Great Dictator on the other has less non-diegetic material, comparatively; and the action keeps more to the story. Plot developments in The Great Dictator build up to the speech in the end of the film; while not every piece of the plot fits the story it is tighter than Modern Times.
Chaplin had a strong ideology that was very pro-humanity, and he portrayed his views in his films. He gave the films implicit meanings that he consciously thought about for long periods. Modern Times shows how Chaplin felt about the industrial era, and how technological efficiency has dehumanized mankind. When the Tramp is working in the factory tightening bolts, he gets so caught up in the work that he does not notice that he is pulled into the machinery as he tightens the bolts of the machine. His body is contorted through painful-looking gears; he has become a piece of the machine itself. Chaplin’s plea for humanity to the soldiers,
“Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you — enslave you — who regiment your lives — tell you what to do — what to think or what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men!...Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!”
Chaplin rose to fame during the Great Depression, and was conscious of the ruin around him. As Hitler rose to power many people in the United States supported him and his quest against the Jews; which appalled Chaplin. He knew that he could use his film as an overt and subtle weapon against social injustices he perceived.
Chaplin played with the frame rate in many of his films. By using the frame rate of 18 fps, or another speed, he could give the story a greater pacing he felt that he wanted. It allows for Chaplin to move in a manner he could not on his own; the Tramp could then move faster, be more graceful, or be clumsy. The effect works; it is subtle enough for the audience not to notice it. Paulette Godard’s character in Modern Times is introduced by showing her cutting a bushel of bananas and throwing them to children. She is a desperate and hungry street urchin. The frame rate is sped up; so that she is furiously cutting the bananas, which gives her more spirit and voraciousness as she goes at it. If watched her at a normal fps rate it would not create the same effect; the change is needed to make her seem more feisty. Later the Tramp goes swimming and somersaults into less than a foot of water in the lake. The reaction of Chaplin to this event is intensified by the action being sped up. It is only a short gag, but the audience spends more time watching him prepare for the dive than in the actual water. He stretches, and warms up, then dives. Another person would have somersaulted more awkwardly, and it would have only appeared painful, but Chaplin’s choreography combined with the adjusted fps rate makes it humorous to the audience instead of painful.
Modern Times, while a “silent film,” still made use of recorded sound; such as music, sound effects, and features Charlie Chaplin singing. The sound is postsynchronous, recorded after filming. It is the amalgamation of silent film techniques with prerecorded diegetic sound that makes the film interesting and unique. Whenever people talk to each other we cannot hear them, instead we read their lips or read the title cards. However, whenever a person talks through a machine, whether it is the Henry Ford-like boss, or a news radio announcer, we get to hear a voice. The only time that we get to hear a voice is through a machine. This adds to theme of the movie—the dehumanization of people because of technology and the “advances” of modern times: people have lost their voices, and they have become slaves to the machines they work for. When Chaplin’s boss comes down to see him and talk to him directly he no longer has a voice as he did when he was on the monitor. Everything he says goes unheard, and only the most important dialogue ends up on a title card. The restaurant scene of the film has Charlie Chaplin singing. However, the character loses the lyrics of the song and has to make up the lyrics. Instead of singing in English he sings in gibberish, imitating French. We can even hear the audience members cheering and laughing at his humorous gestures. Combined with Chaplin’s gestures and dancing, it is a humorous scene. Although the song is the first time many people have heard Chaplin’s voice, the scene is still more about the comical movements and gestures that he performs. This could have been Chaplin’s way of trying to defy modern conventions, which made many of his peers go over to talkies. Even in a historical moment, as Chaplin’s voice being heard, it is still about the pantomime and the mimegesis.
Chaplin would often use a deep focus in his films. He came from a theatre background, and would stage action so that he could use a longer shot, rather than a traditional establishing shot followed by close ups. Characters often speak to each other on screen together instead of two close ups intercut. In the shots of Godard’s Gamin with Chaplin’s Tramp, they talk facing each other, with their sides to the audience. Then in the factory scenes he uses a deep focus, giving us a sense of grandeur and depth in the factory. We can watch the great big gears in the background turning, and men wheeling machinery around with as much focus as Chaplin and other workers in the foreground. He was aware of his body as a comedic tool, and wanted to put it entirely in the shot.
Chaplin uses suspense as a comedic tool in both films by dangling his characters over danger while neither character is aware of it. In Modern Times Chaplin’s Tramp is rollerskating around a multi-level department store to impress his girlfriend; and while doing so comes close to death by approaching an open ledge. It would be an impressive feat of bravery, but the tramp is blindfolded, and he inches closer to the ledge with each pass. The audience fears for the Tramp, but he is unaware that he is in danger of getting hurt while showing off. The comedy kicks in when his girlfriend, Hannah, warns him and he takes the blind fold off. Now he is no longer graceful and flails about to get away from the ledge, getting closer to it. His surprise combined with the relief he never got hurt is what makes the scene funny. This replays in The Great Dictator when the Barber and Hannah escape the stormtroopers; with all of the friends’ belongings, including a hat box placed over the Barber’s eyes. The two run up to the roof, and the Barber runs out onto a beam unaware that a misstep could mean his death. His friend calls out to him to be careful. The Barber comically drops several items he is holding to his friends dismay, thinking he is placing them on the ground. Again, while we fear for his safety, the true comedy comes in when he takes the hat box off his head and looks down, he finally drops all the items and flails about until he can reach the safety of the roof. The dramatic build-up of Chaplin’s falling climaxes with his becoming aware of his danger, which leads to his safety and the audience’s release of emotion with laughter.
Modern Times and The Great Dictator are a culmination of everything that Chaplin had learned working on film years prior. They also show his ability to adapt and grow; he redeveloped himself to use sound design, and even use speech as a comical and dramatic device. Most impressive of Chaplin is how he used his films not just for entertainment or for self gain, but he used them to promote social values he developed. He was worried about industry destroying men’s souls, and a dictator destroying the world. There hasn’t been anyone quite like Chaplin since.
