In 1936, Charlie Chaplin made Modern Times, and boy were those times modern. Inspired by post-Great Depression misery around the country and a conversation he had with Mahatma Gandhi about the soul-deadening nature of technology, his “Little Tramp” character gets picked up in a raid on a Communist protest, accidentally eats cocaine, and fights the cops. It took him four years to make another movie. He found he had something to say, again, and it would take his first film with full sound to say it.

Adolf Hitler had become a sort of obsession for Chaplin. They were born just four days apart, and a screening of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will made him realize that Hitler’s overwhelming persona, pretending to be powerful or dominant, could just as easily be presented as absurd and clownish. Plus: the moustache. So he put away the character of the Tramp and created a slapstick-y, mistaken-identity comedy of ridicule about the most serious imaginable topic: the rise of fascism and Nazism.

In 1940, the world knew darkness had covered Europe, but not how deeply. The war had started, but the United States hadn’t joined it yet. Jewish communities certainly spread word of repression and violence, disappearances in the night, unremitting fear, but too few listened. Before the world knew the Holocaust had happened, the world couldn’t believe the Holocaust was possible. Chaplin later said that if he’d known the true extent of the horror of the concentration camps, he could not have made the film. Then again, if you knew about the Holocaust in 1940, how could you have done anything normal at all?

He sent a copy of the film to Hitler. Inner circle Nazi party member Albert Speer denied he ever saw it. Other accounts say he watched it twice. Chaplin said he would “give anything to know what he thought of it,” though he must’ve had a hunch. Courage expresses itself through whatever means are at hand.

In 1953, blacklisted and harassed by the FBI, Chaplin left the U.S., saying “[s]ince the end of the last world war, I have been the object of lies and propaganda by powerful reactionary groups who, by their influence and by the aid of America’s yellow press, have created an unhealthy atmosphere in which liberal-minded individuals can be singled out and persecuted. Under these conditions I find it virtually impossible to continue my motion-picture work, and I have therefore given up my residence in the United States.”

VIEW this month’s full Big Picture series lineup.

This screening is held in the Historic Duncan Auditorium. This space utilizes open seating for this event, seat selection is not required.