75 years Chaplin message against fascism – Hotline

City México.- The famous silent film comic that started with her endearing smile Charlot, premiered on October 15, 1940 in New York his film “The Great Dictator”, a work that mocked the

European totalitarian fascism and ended with one of the best speeches of the history of cinema ambitions. The allegation of over four and a half minutes with Chaplin concluded that the film was a call for democracy, freedom, brotherhood of peoples and against greed, hatred and intolerance.

A message resonated as a personal statement of Chaplin, who starred, directed, wrote and financed the film that raised suspicions political and diplomatic rebukes from its production phase.

The actor, “The Great Dictator” I presumed to be qualified as propaganda contrary to US interests by US authorities, who in 1952 he came to prohibit his return to the country where he had lived for 40 years.

This artist born in London would US in a last chance in 1972 to collect his honorary Oscar.

Before its entry into World War II, USA he preferred to stay out of European tensions and the rise of belligerent nationalism that was sympathetic because they opposed what he considered the greatest threat of the time. Communism

Anti-fascism emanating from “The Great Dictator” was understood in that world as an undercover procomunismo polarized, and many tried for it to Chaplin, who went to swell the blacklist of banned by Hollywood artists.

The plot of the film focused two stories, that of a barber who lived in a ghetto in an imaginary country called Tomania, and the ambitious leader of that state, the dictator Hynkel, both characters played by Chaplin.

Tomania was an allusion To Germany; Hynkel, Hitler; and the barber symbolized the victim of tyranny.

Chaplin made Hynkel and the barber were physically similar to exchange their roles, so that an accident would cause the end of the tape the oppressor was arrested by his soldiers and the oppressed take his place at the climax of the film.

The parallels do not end there. The documentary “The Tramp and the Dictator” (2002) asked about the similarities between Chaplin and Hitler, beyond the mustache.

Both were born in the same week in 1889, had a difficult childhood, the first in London and the other in Vienna, which led them to take artistic vocations, actor and painter, respectively, and both were influential figures, albeit very differently.

Whoever architect collaborator Hitler, Albert Speer, said in his last years of life that “The Great Dictator” was “the best documentary” about the Nazi leader. It is believed that Hitler had the opportunity to see the film, although it is unknown what his reaction might be.

The film was the biggest commercial success of Chaplin, but its release was limited to US, UK and Mexico before the surrender of Germany in World War II.

In France, which had been occupied by the Nazis, was shown in 1945, in Italy in 1946 and Dead, Mussolini, and Spain in 1976, Francisco Franco died.

“The Great Dictator” liked to film critics at the time, not its solemn final speech, which was seen as an extravagance that was meaningless in the history, although his message, however, does find your site for posterity.

TJ