Pick Of The Month from Saul Nachshen: The Great Dictator
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Nitrate Stock is pleased to introduce this new feature, which asks friends, readers and fellow film aficionados to provide their choice for the month's most unmissable flick.
The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin's first full length talky: I feel like I was born and raised on this masterpiece. If you've never seen the little tramp dance around with a globe (or even if you've seen it before) you owe it to yourself to go and watch this movie. The first time I was allowed to stay up late to watch it on TV I knew I didn't understand it. But I couldn't stop laughing when the guy with the funny mustache, the dictator of Tomania, was screaming and coughing into the microphones.
Some people argue that the speech at the end is too spot-on. That the entire movie went to dark places while Hitler was rising to power. That Chaplin claims he would not have made this movie if he understood the full extent of what was going on. But others will say (and I agree) that it is a powerful and scathing attack on Nazi ideology. I can only imagine how much of a cathartic experience it might have been in 1940 to finally get a belly laugh (instead of a tear) from the guy with the funny mustache.
-Saul Nachshen
THE GREAT DICTATOR screens this Sunday all day at BAM as part of their Chaplin in 35mm series. Feel free to e-mail me at joew@nitratestock.net with your monthly picks, Stockahz!
