The Great Dictator

Post #193,475 by Arkadiy 2/7/05 5:25:18 PM Reply	The Great Dictator Watched a DVD yesterday. A sad and hollow experience... The copyright is 1940, and yet this is the last atttempt of 19th century to come to grips with the experiences of the new era. The movie belongs in the past, where a Jew hitting stormtrouper did not die instantly, where women and children could find refuge on roofs, where the inmate's number was carefully sewed ono his jumpsuit, not tatooed on his forearm. Where concentration camps had mail delivery and some hope to ever let a prisoner go. Chaplin is a superb actor. But he simply does not have vocabulary for what's going on in this new century. The movie is sad, but not in the way he intended. And it is funny, but it's a guilty laugh. -- - I was involuntarily self-promoted into management. [link\|http://kerneltrap.org/node/4484\|Richard Stallman]
Post #193,482 by GBert 2/7/05 5:46:28 PM Reply	Thanks! I haven't seen this since I was kid. I'd like to see it again... One of my grandfathers was an officer in the Italian Infantry during WWI and was captured by the Germans during the Caporetto disaster of 1917; he spent the rest of the war in a concentration camp near Hamburg. They relied on Red Cross-delivered packages from home to survive on -- he said the german camp guards that delivered the packages used to watch bug-eyed at the food they got, but never intercepted them, though they were on a starvation diet themselves. Giovanni Have whatever values you have. That's what America is for. You don't need George Bush for that.
Post #193,488 by Another Scott 2/7/05 6:01:18 PM Reply	It was on cable TV recently. It'll be on [link\|http://www.turnerclassicmovies.com/ThisMonth/Article/0,,297,00.html\|TCM] on 3/3/2005. I only saw tiny bits of it. [link\|http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAchaplinC.htm\|Chaplin]: Half-way through making The Great Dictator I began receiving alarming messages from United Artists. They had been advised by the Hays Office that I would run into censorship trouble. Also the English office was very concerned about an anti-Hitler picture and doubted whether it could be shown in Britain. But I was determined to go ahead, for Hitler must be laughed at. Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator; I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis. However, I was determined to ridicule their mystic bilge about a pure-blooded race. Cheers, Scott.
Post #193,489 by Arkadiy 2/7/05 6:10:52 PM Reply	Thank you. Makes sense. -- - I was involuntarily self-promoted into management. [link\|http://kerneltrap.org/node/4484\|Richard Stallman]

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