Talk:Charlie Chaplin/sandbox-2

The Great Dictator section

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The 1940s saw Chaplin face a series of controversies, both in his work and his personal life, which changed his fortunes and severely affected his popularity in America. The first of these was a new boldness in expressing his political beliefs. Deeply disturbed by the surge of militaristic nationalism in 1930s world politics, Chaplin found that he could not keep these issues out of his work. Parallels between himself and Adolf Hitler had been widely noted: the pair were born four days apart, both had risen from poverty to world prominence, and the German dictator wore the same toothbrush moustache as the Tramp. It was this physical resemblance that formed the basis of Chaplin's next film, The Great Dictator, which directly satirised Hitler and attacked fascism.

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After the success of Modern Times, Chaplin's wealth and independence gave him the freedom to take on more pressing subjects in his films, telling his friend, writer Max Eastman, that he needed to so something which would "give him more spiritual satisfaction." That, states film historian Steven J. Ross, led Chaplin to "deal with an evil he considered far greater than mass production: Adolph Hitler." Chaplin's familiarity with what was going on in Germany was heightened by his friendship with numerous recent European émigrés, including Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Sergei Eisenstein, Lion Feuchtwanger and Bertold Brecht, along with many others.

The fear of growing Nazism in the 1930s "deeply affected Chaplin," adds Ross. One newspaper wrote that "No other cause so gripped Hollywood during the 1930s." Ross explains Chaplin's motivation:

The more he read about Hitler's "attacking of minority people, or people that didn't agree with him," the more he felt compelled to confront the situation on screen. . . . Believing his movies more effective than his offscreen activities, Chaplin focused on making a film that mocked Hitler and his fascist allies.

The film became a visual "wakeup call for many Americans who cared little about Hitler's persecution of the Jews," and, adds Ross, "marked the first time that images of Jewish ghettos and subsequent warnings about concentration camps appeared in a major Hollywood production," and "probably the first time the term 'concentration camps' was heard on American screens." Chaplin included scenes showing entire Jewish districts being burned to the ground, and Chaplin's barber character is shown being arrested and sent to a concentration camp.