I have been wanting to write a post about Charlie Chaplin for a long time, but every time I hit the incompetence wall: The man is/was such a venerable authority that anything about him better be of high quality. And since I did not feel I had anything that matched this requirement, I avoided it. But something happened today that made me change my mind.
As I was going through my bookmarks on the net, I came upon several versions of his speech in the Dictator movie. It is a parody style criticism of Hitler and Fascism, in which he expresses his views about power and human rights. The movie came out in 1940, but had been in production for 2 years, which means that even before the start of the second world war, Chaplin had taken position against Hitler and Fascism, which was probably very courageous for a film-maker to do then.
Unfortunately, Hollywood at that time (early to mid 40s) did not appreciate film industry celebrities expressing their political views, so Chaplin’s popularity started declining there. Furthermore, the US government, already infested with McCarthyism instincts, investigated him and in 1952 denied him re-entry into the US! He went on to live in Switzerland (not a bad alternative, eh?) and stayed away for 20 years.
You are wondering what is the thing that made me change my mind in all that?
Well, for one the speech itself, which was powerful, and especially since many of the things he said then are true 80 years later. And when you think that this man was suspected and investigated by the US government, you wonder. Honor to the country, though, as the US later took the proper action and recognized its error (20 years later). I was wondering, that Chaplin was able to move on because he had already made it, but what if it were someone of a lower stature, who did not have the means and the reputation?
I would have not written this had I thought that ‘well that was McCarthyism, and everybody knows it was wrong’. The speech got to me because what he was warning us about never stopped on the world stage, it just changed identity and nature.
The Chaplin’s monologue at the end of the movie Dictator (almost 4mins)
Paris, January 19, 2023
Zeejay