In my discussion of war films on Wednesday I omitted to mention the names of any of them that had been made during the Second World War. Alex, quite rightly, pulled me up on this and said I should at least have spoken of The Great Dictator, which he claimed was made in 1940. I didn't know this, and didn't believe it. When I saw that film it felt like a criticism from distance of Hitler, but it was made five years before the war ended. This is, as Alex says, pretty incredible. I had always thought, or perhaps been taught, that Europeans weren't really aware of what Hitler was doing until after the war. Here, however, we have proof of their awareness, and their ability to criticise it. I loved Chaplin's movie without knowing when exactly it was made. This new knowledge contextualises it further, and emphasises its originality, although I think we should always be careful when putting films in context - it could just as easily be our version of the context we want to see, rather than the genuine one. Anyway, just to throw a spanner in the works I thought I'd end with a few lines from the ol' classic:
- A satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point of it.
- Oh, but really biting satire is always better than physical force.
- No, physical force is always better with Nazis.
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