Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889-1977), who is considered as one of the most important figures in the history of film industry, was an English comic actor and film maker. Chaplin received many awards and honours. Six of Chaplin’s films have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress. Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator,’ a political satire was nominated for five academy awards. It is the story of a Jewish barber who is mistaken for Hitler and is asked to take his place. At the end he rejects his position as an emperor and gives an impassioned speech that reveals the view of a selfless leader.
The very first line of the emperor is “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor”. Instead he wants to help everyone where there are Jews, blacks and whites. He says that all should live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. According to him, it was greed that has poisoned men’s souls. It was knowledge that made all cynical. So, now they think too much and feel too little. The barber in disguise, is of the opinion that more than machinery the men need humanity. More than cleverness the men need kindness and gentleness, without these qualities all will be violent and all will be lost.
He consoles the suffering people by saying that the misery will pass. The dictators who have caused it will also die and the power that they took from the people will return to the people. Then he advises soldiers saying that they should not give themselves to brutes who despises them, enslave them, and control their lives. They actually treat them like cattle. The dictators are machine men with machine mind and machine hearts. As all soldiers are men he says that they should not hate others but love everyone. Similarly they should not fight for slavery but for liberty.
Moreover he says that in the chapter 17 of St Luke it is written, “the kingdom of God is within man” – not one man, not a group of men, but in all men. That means we have the power to make this life a wonderful adventure. So, in the name of democracy, we should use the power and fight for a new world where all men have a chance to work, the youth a future and old will have security. Democracy which believes that the voice of people is the voice of God, will produce a world of reason, where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. As the people know their power they will never allow any dictators to rule them in the future. So, he invites all including soldiers to fight for liberty and to establish democracy which is capable of building a world where there is no greed, hatred, intolerance and war.
---Thulasidharan V