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The final speech by the Barber, played by Charlie Chaplin, from the movie The Great Dictator is this week’s Greatest Speech. Read on.
In the 1940s, when the United States was at peace with Nazi Germany and around the time when Adolf Hitler’s end was nigh, a film “The Great Dictator” was made. Directed, produced, scored and written by the legendary Charlie Chaplin, the film went on to condemn Hitler like no other film of the era. Interestingly, the film was Chaplin’s first talking film. Chaplin was the only producer who continued to make mute films around that time. Without doubt, the film turned out to be Chaplin’s most commercially successful film.
Charlie Chaplin played two roles in the film: that of a Jewish Barber, and of Adenoid Hynkel (parody of Adolf Hitler) who is the dictator of a fictional nation Tomania (parody of Germany). Towards the end, the Jewish Barber goes on to become the Führer of Tomania.
The speech that we portray today in our series of the The Greatest Speeches deserves to be a part of this column. On YouTube, the speech is “the greatest speech ever made”. The speech is delivered by the Barber (Chaplin) after he is made Führer of Tomania. Because of his humble background, at first, he is hesitant to get on the podium. Once he gets up on the podium, for the first forty seconds or so, he utters not a single word. And then he begins. The speech starts with ever so touching words, “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor.”
He goes on to talk about inequality that has clouded humanity and how greed “has barricaded the world with hate”. Towards the end is when the speech becomes worthy of being called “the greatest”, where he addresses his soldiers. “Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men!!” The unnatural men, and the machine men being the dictators.
Chaplin, hands down the greatest comedian of cinema, in what was his first talking movie, delivers a speech that manages to touch the very core of your heart, putting into words what all of us have thought before, but have been too hesitant to utter; words that inspire us to the verge of tears, making us realise that we have the power- the power to do the impossible, to break free of the chains that tie us down, to break through national barriers, looks past the differences in man, and unite. Unite, to make this world a better place, a place where there is an inexhaustible amount of peace, and love, and happiness.