458
PARTISAN REVIEW
film in parallel plot-strands, related indirectly thru thoughts and causes
rather than directly thru will and action.
4. (a} The invective against Hynkel is to my taste all-powerful: dis–
gust expressed by the basest tricks of low vaudeville, gibberish, belching,
dirty words, and radio static. You will not find the like outside of Juvenal.
It is so successful that even many of the slapstick errors do not fail to
create the impression "Good! hit 'im again!" On the other hand, the per–
sonal Hynkel is not the political Hitler, a point to which I must return.
(h) The sentimental comedy is catastrophic. Concerning Maurice Mosco–
vich and Paulette Goddard I don't know what to say, hut the pain in the
neck is with me as I write. But the coup de grace is the sunlit agriculture
of Osterlich-Tel Aviv-Pasadena. Nevertheless! paradoxically I shall almost
argue that it is just these horrors which lend to a kind of triumph, the
major triumph, of the film as a whole. (c) The slapstick and burlesque, it
cannot
be
denied, badly weaken the force of the invective. It's 'no doubt a
kind of invective to show that a dictator is all too human, hut slapstick in
general involves at least neutrality toward the victim, and Chaplin slap–
atick almost always turns out with the victim made amiable; it is a kind
of pat of approval. In itself, however, the Hynkel-Napaloni business is a
first-rate example of the ordinary; and the burlesque character-exploration
of the soulful Hynkel is often great. I must speak of the Balloon-Dance
again: this is almost the only dance in the movies so far (the others are in
Chapl~n's
other films); he fills the screen and the whole screen dances, so
the processions of Eisenstein dance; and the strains of Lohengrin are pat
as can he.
5. Hynkel is not Hitler. It is clear from the foregoing that this Hitler
can he only the natural and unnatural man to whom Chaplin's old little
man can entertain personal feelings. There is absolutely no political com–
edy in the film. Propaganda, in the person of Herr Garbitsch, is treated
with solemnity. Where, for instance, is the comedy of the atrocities that
would exhaust the Phooey's patience and he the prelude to invasion?
English mustard lays the dictators low, hut where is the comedy of non–
intervention, etc., etc.? Certainly the real Hitler and his real world are,
in their dry way, funnier than Chaplin's Adenoid HynkeL But
if
Chaplin
had in fact engaged in a more objective satire, it seems to me that the most
precious effect of the entire film would have been lost. This brings me to
my last point.
6. Except for a few documentaries, like Joris Ivens'
Spanish Earth,
The Great Dictator
strikes me-obviously I cannot speak for any one else
on this point-as the only earnest propaganda film. How is this amazing
effect achieved? Most, perhaps, by the ring of autobiography never absent
from Chaplin's art, the ring which made the song at the end of
Modem
Times
seem the pathetic return of the great silent mime to the singing
variety performer. In this film, for instance, what is the significance of
the curious amnesia after the memory of
Shoulder Arms?
It is achieved,
again, by the very restriction of the invective to what the Chaplin we
