@Pied_Pfeffer The Great Dictator is one of my favorite films. He did a good job on Hitler. Then, at the end, he breaks character and gives this incredible speech.
The actual filming was in 1939, and the Brits were still in appeasement mode, Chamberlain had returned from Munich only months before with Hitller’s promise that he wouldn’t invade any more countries after the Austrian Anschluss in March, 1938. The Brits got wind of the film and banned it before it opened. Hitler banned it, but had a copy brought in through Portugal and viewed it twice. Nobody recorded his reaction to it. The film remained banned in Germany until 1958.
During filming nobody knew the true extent of the Nazi atrocities that had been perpetrated for years, but by the end of 1939 everybody knew there were one million German troops sitting on the French border. Before the film was in the can, in September, 1939, German armored divisions had invaded Poland. It only took a matter of hours.
After the war Chaplin said that if he’d known the extent of the Nazi atrocities, he would have never done a comedy about them.
It’s a great film and an amazing speech for many reasons.