The Tramp and the Dictator

Dirs. Kevin Brownlow and Michael Kloft

About the courage necessary to make a political film: Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. The film was one of Chaplin’s best pieces (not as good as Modern Times, but still great), but the documentary had the Turner Classic Movies sheen on it. The efforts to show the corollaries (and differences) between Chaplin and Hitler struck me as laboured - being born within the same week shouldn’t mean anything beyond being a coincidence. I found myself agreeing with its premise, that sometimes you have to deal with horror through humour, but not necessarily with its claims about the power of film. (“Here was this huge artist standing up against this gargantuan monster” says a critic - I think Stanley Kauffman - at one point.) Which is the point where I randomly quote one of the great funny movie lines, “Don’t be stupid be a smarty come and join the Nazi Party!” from The Producers. Back to the movie - there’s a lot of questions raised about appeasement versus the necessity of making waves sometimes, and we’re reminded of the old saw that Hollywood as a business is really very conservative, in the sense of trying not to upset anyone. The clips from The Great Dictator itself are great, but then why wouldn’t they be?

Does anyone know why Ray Bradbury got so much time on screen? I’m still not sure of his relation to the film; everyone else speaking was either involved, or a film critic, or a historian… Ratio of films with male-peeing scenes to total films seen: 5/11. Although, really, documentaries shouldn’t count.