[sent 2 November 2020 to my wife and our daughters]
Good morning. On the eve of Election Day 2020, I plan to devote my usual twenty or so minutes at the piano today playing pieces from Charlie Chaplin films. As you probably know, Chaplin contributed to and collaborated on much of the music that accompanied his films. I find so refreshing what has been described as the ‘Chaplinesque’ distinction of these compositions – e.g., the beauty, the mystery, the charm, the attention, the elegance, the gravity, the timing. Last week I finished Peter Ackroyd’s Charlie Chaplin: A Brief Life (2014). The association of Charlie Chaplin’s life experiences, personality, and international celebrity with Charles Dickens’ life experiences, personality, and international celebrity is convincing.
Re the closing scene in the 1936 Modern Times (the last of Chaplin’s silent films), Ackroyd explains that Chaplin “reverts to silence, as the Tramp and the gamine make their way upon the long and winding road towards the rising sun. The final words are ‘Buck up, never say die! We’ll get along’. It was also the last appearance of the ‘little fellow’. That is perhaps why in Modern Times Chaplin repeated so many familiar scenes from his previous films. It was a way of saying farewell. In this last walk into the distance, it is clear that Charlie will never have a home and will always be a wanderer. He had once been violent and lascivious; he then became gentler and more ingenious; at a slightly later date he grew into the figure of humankind; at the end he is a romantic, filled with pathos. In whatever incarnation, he was somewhere outside the world and a stranger.”
After Hitler invaded Austria in 1938, Chaplin began working on a film script in which he would play the part of a comic dictator. The biting and controversial political satire would be his first film with dialogue. The Great Dictator premiered in 1940. Chaplin plays both a Jewish barber living in a ghetto and the dictator of the fictional Tomainia. The film – which capitalizes on the appearance similarities between Chaplin and Hitler -- ends with the barber being mistaken for the dictator as the barber attempts to escape wearing a soldier’s uniform. He is ceremonially escorted to a platform where he is to speak to the army that has brutally invaded Osterlich, to a massive gathering of the conquered, and by radio to the world. All expect a bellicose and warmongering speech.
[final speech in The Great Dictator]
I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible -- Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness -- not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world, there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men -- cries out for universal brotherhood -- for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world -- millions of despairing men, women, and little children -- victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say -- do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed -- the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers, don’t give yourselves to brutes -- men who despise you -- enslave you -- who regiment your lives -- tell you what to do -- what to think and what to feel! Who drill you -- diet you -- treat you like cattle -- use you as cannon fodder. 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! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate -- the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St. Luke, it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” -- not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power -- the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then -- in the name of democracy -- let us use that power -- let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world -- a decent world that will give men a chance to work -- that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world -- to do away with national barriers -- to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!Here are links to (1) the final speech and (2) the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8HdOHrc3OQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHZ46sQkzqU
If you update the wording into today’s social context the stirring vision in the final speech, I think you will be encouraged and perhaps even inspired. I am, each time I return.
Doug/Dad
