The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)
I always liked this version with music added:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WibmcsEGLKo
I remember sharing a jail cell with a 19-year-old Mexican kid once and we were talking about the guards being assholes and he said "they're like machine men"; and I said "with machine minds and machine hearts?" and he was like "YES! You know it?!" -- it was a good moment, we spent the next few days trying to remember the whole speech.
Dickens' "Ghost of Christmas Present" to Scrooge, visiting the Cratchit home:
“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”
https://www.owleyes.org/text/christmas-carol/read/stave-thre...
Got the opportunity to watch this film on a big screen at a local film festival last week. I think he wrote the whole film around this speech. Also there's this wonderful scene where he(Hynkel) dances with a globe in it:
"Don't let your mind speak louder than your heart" - I think many have this so very wrong. Is support for fascism is a sensible, logical, well-thought-out policy? No, it's a heart-felt, emotional appeal to scared, proud, paranoid, crude, brutal people (who seem to be about half of our neighbors). surely the mindful decision is empathetic, constructive, and wise - not just base.
I'd wager it's more like we don't think at all and feel only anger. At least online that is.
It is said that Franklin D. Roosevelt encouraged Chaplin to make the The Great Dictator. Indeed, around the time the film was made, the two men shared political views on a lot of things. When Churchill and FDR saw a pre-release private screening of the film, they liked it. (Incidentally, Chamberlain had vowed to ban it in England for fear of angering the actual dictator.) FDR even invited Chaplin to read this very speech on his inauguration in 1941.
Ironically, this is the film that made Americans turn against him. Later that year, he was subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating pro-war propaganda (this was a few months before the US entered the war.)
In the following years, Chaplin was extremely vilified by the Americans mainly for his pro-Soviet and communist views (or rather, for his refusal to be anti-Communist). This led to politically-motivated prosecutions, and culminated in him being exiled from the US when the president Harry Truman(!) canceled his re-entry permit while away on family vacation. (Chaplin was never an American citizen, despite living in the country for over 40 years.)
There’s a recent good book review summarizing this: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/charlie-chapli...
If you watch the news it should be clear that we feel too much and think too little. Everything is a rage fueled garbage contest.
Colored with better audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCXdxFPCqfk
A great song that features this passage: Iron Sky by Paolo Nutini
For making this speech, and the anti-fascist film in which it takes place, Charlie Chaplain was surveilled and persecuted by the US government (FBI, CIA, HUAC, and more). He was effectively exiled out of the country that had been his home for decades by the time this film came out in 1940.
In this speech he mentions 'a system' that generates war. That was enough for him to be branded a communist, hounded, smeared, and exiled.
> " 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 ..."
If there was a good argument against the arrogance of billionaires who think they should have technology that lets them live forever, here it is.
"Don't let your mind speak louder than your heart". In tech we value data and being right so much, we may be too often missing the important part of being a decent human being.
I find it ironic that "We think too much and feel to little" appears to contradict the conclusion at the end "Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness."
> 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.
Just look around to see how true these words still are.
This thread has some debate about whether thinking or feelings lead to the bad mindsets that nurture bad behavior.
For me, bad mindsets typically arise after some thinking. Often effortlessly.
Conversely, my best mindsets happen after being engaged in a positive effort and/or being in a safe, enriching environment. In these conditions, my better self just forms, seemingly without me exercising any will.
Interestingly enough, this speech ends up in Japanese High School English textbooks quite often. Like, for the last 10+ years at least.
Obligatory link to Melody Sheep's version of the speech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouzKl0oD6sU
Arguably the best version.
A great discussion on the same, emphasizing on silent film history and what this movie means in Chaplin's legacy:
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Helplessly naive but that's the best the cinematography can do about anything - a happy end.
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Perhaps a better way to phrase this is "We think too much and care too little" - feelings, by themselves, are not some fountain of wisdom and insight. You can have feelings of revulsion or repulsion, feelings of disgust and anger.
Feelings are ephemeral and easily manipulated.
Was that speech not made to show the audience how susceptible they also were?
https://youtu.be/J7GY1Xg6X20?t=97
the line "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…" gave me a chill.
i believe in science, progress, and long for a day where everyone is treated with equality and empathy. but- once billionaires start living longer with longevity regimes / giant piles of money, how long until we are subjected to the whims of a maniac who will not die like musk, bezos, or gates?
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It goes well with this (truncated) version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PNV6Lg_ajA
Meanwhile:
> Trump tells rally immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’
Just a reminder that the Three Stooges did the mocking-Hitler thing months before Chaplin.
This film is currently streaming on the “max” platform. I watched it a few days ago. It was quite controversial at the time it came out.
Obviously you should not torrent a copy of this 85 year old film as that would further diminish any incentive Chaplin might have to make any more films.
I know a lot of people here are missing the mark - the issue here is EMPATHY not -feelings-.
"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. "
"We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness."
Please take in the WHOLE message before dissecting a single sentence.
"Greed has poisoned men's souls"
Greed used to considered a sin. Now it seems to be seen as a virtue by some. It's not enough to have a Ferrari - you need to have a whole garage full. It's not enough to have a yacht - it's got to be a super yacht.
> And so long as men die, liberty will never perish
> Over the past ten years, the [longevity research] industry has grown in financing from $500 million in 2013 to a peak of $6.2 billion in 2021.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
This speech is, in a nutshell, a call for humanity, peace and tolerance.
It pains me to see a world where our centers of education have become almost precisely the opposite. They have distorted the minds of our young to the point that they are full of hatred, intolerance, bigotry and, yes, racism. All underscored by a solid foundation of utter ignorance.
There's a video somewhere of an interviewer asking university students to list the Great Books they have read. The vast majority of them had no clue what the interviewer was talking about at all. Not a clue. Because our centers of education are indoctrinating, not educating. Those engaged in indoctrination don't want young minds to be exposed to the vast world of thought and reason represented by these works.
Note that this comment isn't about the US. I think I can say this wave of ignorance and hatred has travelled the planet, taking many forms.
A friend often says that humanity is one good power outage away from reverting to cavemen behavior. Frankly, it is hard to disagree with his view. We have seen this time and time again, no power outage required.
This reality makes me wonder what Chaplin's speech might be if he had to write it in today's context.
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Charlie Chaplin did not say that 'it depends on the context'.
i think that the fact these five words were said is a sign. It shows that the collective memory of these events is waning.
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Surprisingly nice website.
It would be really cool if people stopped being gullible marks for psychopathic pedophiles.
‘Perverted, degenerate and indecent acts’
http://archive.today/2020.07.25-172048/https://www.telegraph...
I hate being such a fault finder but his sentiment about people and resources is just wrong. The WW2 generation became so peace loving after the war not before. Prior to then, war-lust was a popular sentiment, some viewed war as an adventure or a rite of passage even, especially before the first war.
We humans in general don't want peace, we find it boring I guess. He talks about people being treated equally and living on peace and how the greedy few are causing war and conflict, that sounds nice in a movie but in reality regular everyday people are hateful. In the west, we're living in a time of excess and luxury and have weaned off all that tribal hatred to the most part now, but what scares and frustrates me is that most people don't realize the rest of the world isn't so nice. They look at people burning american flags for example and think that's the minority lol, they think if we were nicer to them they wouldn't hate us so much. How naive!
What he said about the good earth being abundant is false too, technically correct but abundance exists for some and not others. Like in america just about every resource is abundant but in sub-saharan africa not so much. Not that the Nazis were using lack of resources in their propaganda.
The fear of our own destruction and misery is the only practically effective means to achieve peace. That's why nukes have been so effective so far, else we would have had more world wars.
So long as we crave violence in our every day lives there will be war lust and so long as that is true militaries must exist and continue to pursue various means of killing people.
The problem is in the human soul and how it is raised and our attachments to culture, tradition and history.
Action movies aren't popular with men because we're so peaceful. We crave the violence, we just want the situation to be framed so that we are the good guys and our violence is justified.
This part is very interesting. "Even now my voice is reaching millions"
Chaplin knew this message was for future generations. When he says "even now" it means, hey im long dead but this message is finally being herd around the world.
Chaplin & Nikola Tesla were friends. Tesla told Chaplin what was to come down the line like the internet, what he called "the transmission of intelligence" I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Tesla himself didn't write this speech.
"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way." - Nikola Tesla
We fought for liberty and freedom but unfortunately instructions unclear and we ended up dropping 500000 tons of bombs on Cambodia.