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I’ve seen [Chaplin] take a sound track and cut it all up and paste it back together and come up with some of the dangdest effects you ever heard—effects a composer would never think of. Don’t kid yourself about that one. He would have been great at anything — music, law, ballet dancing, or painting — house, sign, or portrait. I got the screen credit for The Great Dictator music score, but the best parts of it were all Chaplin’s ideas, like using the Lohengrin “Prelude” in the famous balloon-dance scene.
Meredith Willson, later to become well-known as creator of the 1957 musical comedy
The Great Dictator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I watched this last night and finished it this morning. I was amazed at how comprehensive a look at Hitler and the threat of fascism Chaplain created. I was expecting a movie made in 1939 to only be able to address a small and fuzzy picture of Germany, but Chaplain sees right to the evil heart of what Hitler was trying to do and mocks it throughly and with lots of detail. The movie is of course consistently intelligent and funny but since I have not seen Chaplain much I am not used to this so I loved that part of it. Also Chaplain breaks character and speaks directly to modern people in a very striking speech at the end, speaking as the anti-Hitler, out of love and compassion for man and not out of hate. Coming from a silent film making genius who was born 4 days after Hitler, I found myself soaking in every word he said with profound respect.
