When we featured this famous scene on OC five years ago, Sheerly Avni wrote: “Charlie Chaplin is said to have added his 4 1/2 minute final speech to The Great Dictator (1940) only after Hitler’s invasion of France. The speech both showcases the actor’s considerable dramatic gifts and makes a prescient, eloquent plea for human decency.” According to the biography, Charlie Chaplin and His Times, “the speech was [indeed] recorded in the Chaplin Studio on June 24, 1940, precisely one week after the fall of France,” when “only Britain stood between Hitler and total victory in the west.” As America resisted getting entangled in a European conflict, Chaplin felt the need to speak out against fascism. He spoke the following lines. They were timely then in Europe. They’re timely now in America. And they’ll be timely somewhere else in the future, that you can unfortunately guarantee.
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 aeroplane 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!
The Great Dictator was Chaplin’s first full-talking feature film. It was also his most controversial film. And a huge a huge box office hit.
We thank Boing Boing and Bonnie Burton for reminding us of the scene’s enduring power and appeal.
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65 Free Charlie Chaplin Films Online
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Will someone please forward this to the new US president!
Chaplin’s speech is from another era (back when I was born). He said, “In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.” At that time the world’s population was approximately 2.4 billion people; today it is approximately 7.4 billion. We humans are choking this planet. The forcing out of other animal species; the destruction of more and more natural areas, and of course, Climate Change are our sad heritage. The competition among us for depleting resources is a basic cause for so much of the conflict we see about us.
He also said, “We think too much and feel too little.” Wasn’t it feeling too much and thinking too little that led to the result of the U.S. Presidential vote this week?
Today’s soldiers need to hear and see this.
Yes, a very timely clip, and I was impressed with it when I first saw it in the ’50s.
However, why do you have to spoil it by adding that ubiquitous, doomy gloomy music which seems to be added to a huge number of amateur YouTube productions? Nothing from silent WWI docs to silent Laurel and Hardy docs seems to be free of it. Now you’ve even ruined this seminal piece from The Great Dictator, which was deliberately intended to be heard in silence. But oh no, the modern mind is deemed incapable of taking anything in without the addition of mood music, no matter how hackneyed. Shame on you.
“In the beginning was the word, and then came the eraser. ”
The Communist Manifesto according to Marx. 1:1
A most pertinent message for our times.
I want ask to be granted to give me right to reproduce this video from the movie of ” The Great dictator”.could u please tell me from where I can get right of this video to play on my YouTube channel without copyright strike.