Word: chaplinitis
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...such frolicsome ones as those in which he describes the passing fads in Japanese suicides (belly-ripping, jumping into volcanoes, drowning). Most important are those in which he discusses the Army fascists and fanatics like Sublieutenant Kiyoshi Koga, who testified in court that he had plotted to assassinate Charlie Chaplin. Koga's reason: "Chaplin is the darling of the capitalistic class. We thought that killing him would bring on war with the United States...
...Great Dictator" opens with a World War I sequence. The Big Bertha cannon is being aimed to destroy the great Cathedral at the center of Paris--but the shot succeeds only in blasting a little privy in the suburbs. Charlie Chaplin, himself, suffered a similar misfortune with this picture. He planned to pierce the Nazis with barbs of wit and make people laugh at the weakness and foolishness of Herr Hitler...
Charlie mistimed his jokes. When he is the little Jewish barber, shaving customers to waltzes, beating storm troopers to the punch in street battles, and making love to Paulette Goddard, it's the old Charlie Chaplin of "Modern Times" with pantomime and fine expressive acting. But as Hynkel, the dictator, Charlie either falls flat or resorts to simple slapstick of the three stooges type to get his laughs...
Everyone of course knows the plot by now. The Ghetto barber, mistaken for dictator Hynkel, gets to make the big address at a party rally. Instead of preaching tyranny and inhumanity, however, Chaplin himself steps out of character to preach his own democratic philosophy. Early reviewers pretty much agreed that this spoiled the picture. The changing events in Europe will make this statement of faith in democracy more appealing than some of the ruthless storm troopers' actions which now aren't quite so funny. As a whole the picture is a spotty job. In some scenes, such as the bubble...
After listening for almost two months to such cinematic witnesses as Will Hays, Charles Chaplin, Harpo and Chico Marx, a Manhattan jury in Federal Court found massive, 58-year-old Joseph M. Schenck, chairman of 20th Century-Fox, guilty on two counts of evading Federal income taxes amounting to more than $250,000 for the years 1935 and 1936. Possible sentence: ten years, $20,000 fines...