10 Films That Shaped The Course Of History
1. The Great Dictator (1940)
"If I had known the extent of Hitler’s atrocities, I would never have made such a film," declared Charlie Chaplin years after the end of the Second World War, who had initially intended for it to be simply a satirical comedy based on Hitler and Mussolini. As it turned out, however, it would become so much more than that…
To find the film’s message, one hath look no further than Chaplin’s double role as a Jewish barber and as an antisemitic tyrant, Adenoid Hynkel. The hypocrisy and idiocy of European dictators is shown throughout the film by making the audience die…of laughter, with Chaplin at one point giving a passionate speech about democracy.
Believe it not, however, this laugh-out-loud picture became a propaganda tool, which the CIAA (propaganda arm for the US government) propelled across Latin America in an effort to quash support for European fascism. Whether it worked or not is a sensitive topic- many countries banned it, with fights breaking out at cinema screenings between supporters and opponents of fascism.
Ironically, after the war, many Nazis who escaped Europe landed in Latin America, such as Adolf Eichmann, a chief executioner of The Holocaust.
80 years on, a film of such global impact has yet to be replicated.