- (barber) To make this life free and beautiful...
- Why is this hitting really close to home?
♪ (industrial intro) ♪
- I'm sorry.
I don't want to be an emperor.
That's not my business. - Oh, Charlie Chaplin.
- Is that Charlie Chaplin?
- (barber) I don't want to rule or conquer anyone.
I should like to help everyone if possible.
- I don't think I've ever heard him talk.
- (barber) Jew, gentile, black man, white.
We all want to help one another.
Human beings are like that. - That is so... (sighing)
My heart!
- (barber) We want to live by each other's happiness,
not by each other's misery.
- I remember I just saw a snippet of this on Tumblr
when I was 16 and I cried.
- (barber) Greed has poisoned men's souls.
- True.
- (barber) Has barricaded the world with hate.
- Speaking the truth right now!
- (barber) Our knowledge has made us cynical.
Our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little.
- I feel like this is, like... - (barber) We need humanity.
More that cleverness, we need kindness.
- ...everything that people today need to hear.
- (barber) We need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life would be violent,
and all will be lost.
- Whoa, this was foreshadowing.
- (barber) Even now, my voice is reaching millions
throughout the world. - That's kind of cool,
that he says that.
He's talking context in the movie, but millions of people
probably watched this on YouTube.
- (barber) Millions of despairing men, women, and children...
- Is she crying?
I'm finding I want to cry.
- (barber) Victims of a system that makes men torture.
- I don't even know what this is and it's getting to me.
- (barber) To those who can hear me, I say
do not despair.
The hate of men will pass, and dictators die.
- Preach, Chaplin, preach.
- (barber) And the power they took from the people
will return to the people.
- It's so interesting that this was so long ago
and it's still so relevant.
- (barber) Soldiers, don't give yourselves to brutes.
- Yes!
- (barber) Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men!
Machine men with machine minds and machine hearts!
- Get out there and take charge.
Don't fall victim to how society turns people into machines.
- (barber) You have a love of humanity in your hearts.
You don't hate. Only the unloved hate.
The unloved and the unnatural. - Right.
Yeah, you're not robots. You're humans.
- (barber) In the 17th chapter of St. Luke it is written
the Kingdom of God is within man,
not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men, in you...
- This is getting intense.
- (barber) ....you, the people, have the power,
the power to create machines, the power to create happiness.
- This is really beautiful.
- (Hynkel) ...the power to make this life free and beautiful.
- Why is this hitting really close to home?
- (barber) Let us use that power! Let us all unite!
- Wow. You can feel that. It's so good.
- He's looking right at you.
- I feel like he's just staring into my soul and talking to me.
- (barber) Let us fight for a new world,
a decent world that will give men a chance to work,
that will give you the future and old age a security.
- More people need to see this.
This is what we need right now.
- (barber) Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.
Now let us fight to fulfill that promise.
Let us fight...
- I wonder what people were thinking when a comedian back then
was saying all this. That's nuts.
- (barber) To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance.
Let us fight for a world of reason. - Wow.
- (barber) A world where science and progress
will lead to all men's happiness. - He's hitting it.
- (barber) Soldiers! In the name of democracy,
let us all unite! (applause)
- It's still so relevant.
He's so passionate about what he's talking about,
and you can feel that.
- It's very, very relevant.
It's good, but it's also very heartbreaking
that that should still be relevant, that they made this
and, I don't know, sorry, I'm tearing up.
I try not to cry. That got me. (laughing)
You got a tissue?
- (FBE) So that was a monologue from the 1940 film
The Great Dictator. - "The Great Dictator."
I have not heard of that.
- I think I've seen the video somewhere.
I feel like they might show this in schools.
- (FBE) So it's been requested for a long time
because a lot of people consider it to be one of,
if not the greatest, film speech of all time.
- Yeah, I'd agree. It's such a powerful speech.
- (FBE) So what thoughts did you have listening to this speech,
even though it was made 78 years ago, before the United States
even entered World War II? - Oh, that's even more interesting.
I was just thinking of Trump the whole time.
There's always gonna be some crazy guy doing some crazy things.
- You could watch that today and put that in a school
and teach it to little kids and it's still relevant today.
- It's just very interesting to see what he got right with this script.
It could have someone just saying this and not tell you where it's from,
have someone current film this and say it,
and people would be like, "Wow, they really understand
what's happening in this time period."
- We haven't really evolved as a species in these 70+ years
that this film has been made.
Humans are really using their intelligence
to advance technologically, but we're not really using
that same intelligence to advance socially.
- I completely agree with everything that he's saying,
but then it's kind of also like, okay, well,
there's only so much I can accept with that.
Are the words that you're saying actually gonna come to fruition
or is it just, okay, I'm just saying it.
If you don't really challenge some of these things
to make sure that it benefits everybody,
then it's really not helping anybody. It's just a facade.
- (FBE) The film was written, produced, directed by,
and starred Charlie Chaplin.
- Okay, that's where I recognized him from.
I knew he was famous for having that little mustache.
- I was a big fan of his silent film.
I never knew he did a film where he was speaking.
- He is so well known for his comedy, but he is obviously a very soulful,
intelligent human being artist.
- Let's get this number one comedy figure in the world right now
and have him speak about World War II and where we as people,
what we stand for.
So I think it's a good move because people are gonna listen
to someone like that with that much social power,
but it's definitely not something that people would expect him to do.
- (FBE) Chaplin plays both the dictator
who is apparently supposed to represent Adolph Hitler,
and the other a Jewish barber who just happens
to look like the dictator. - That's interesting.
I like the duality of that.
- (FBE) The film, as we mentioned, was made before the U.S.
was in World War II, before the full scope
of Nazi Germany was even know. - Wow.
That's [bleep] insane!
- Hitting just right before the end, it must've related to a lot
of the people then, especially having Hitler being one of the main people
in the movie.
I feel like it would have been even much more powerful then
because it's the exact situation they were going through.
- (FBE) So with everything going on for you in the modern world,
do you feel that there are individuals who are still making content
that speaks to today's times, be it political or humanitarian
in this way? - You know, we may have
content that touches on it, but nothing, I think,
that's that powerful, that hit it all in one speech.
- There are, but they take a softer approach.
A lot of people are worried, oh, I'm gonna lose viewers
or, oh, the comments are gonna be bad.
If you throw the ball but you're not really giving
your full power, it's like you threw it,
but it's not really going where you wanted it to go.
- There's different outlets people use nowadays.
You'll constantly just pass by content online,
random Facebook videos, YouTube videos.
It's spreading everywhere.
We just gotta take the time to find it and listen to it.
- The difference between hearing stuff about that
from back then and today is that everyone has a voice today.
Anyone can be a star on social media where everyone's voice is broadcasted,
so everyone is thinking they're that Charlie Chaplin.
Everyone thinks they're making that big of a movement
in the people. And I think it's not that
we lost the meaning behind the speech or the meaning behind the words.
I think it's just we hear it now from so many different people,
and I think people are kinda just tired of it.
- (FBE) So as Hitler rose to power, comparisons were often made
that Chaplin resembled him due in part to their similar mustaches,
but Chaplin's son in a book mentioned
that it often haunted Chaplin because they were actually born
four days apart and both came from poverty.
- Wow, well, I mean, that's actually good thing
as well as a bad thing because it shows, you know,
you can look the same, but there's different people.
Charlie Chaplin's nothing like that.
- (FBE) Chaplin himself once told his son,
"Just think, he's the madman, I'm the comic,
but it easily could have been the other way around."
- That's really dark, actually, but that's really true.
- People aren't born into hate, but because of their environment
and experiences, that's what gives them
certain thoughts.
- (FBE) So this clip has gone viral on and off
for many years now, but specifically in the last year
it has been shared a lot again.
Why do you think that this speaks to people
during this time period?
- I think it's just genuinely because of how timeless it is.
The fact that we can still relate to it is scary.
- We're really still living in this backwards mindset still.
People are still killing each other.
- It makes me think of how the human condition
hasn't changed much and there's always darkness,
but there's always light as well.
- They were talking about this in the '40s,
but this applies to right now, too.
Maybe this was kind of them foreshadowing for the years to come,
and, I mean, maybe we should actually listen
to what they're saying.
- Especially now, it's so relevant in America.
We've had over 11 shootings in the new year,
and it's just ridiculous.
Just with our current state and our president,
no one's hopeful.
It just feels like he could have been speaking to us,
to our generation right now.
- Obviously, a very political speech, and then when you think politics,
you think of what you're in right now, and you think Trump.
Of course, it's still relevant because, you know,
it just gets you into that mindset like, "Yeah, screw the man!
Like, we need to unite."
- Actual political movies with a message like that
aren't going to hit with people only because people
don't really understand government or understand politics
and it's a lot more complex than it was back in the early days.
- (FBE) So finally, how important do you think it is
to make content that is challenging the political environment
of what's happening in realtime?
- I believe it's extremely important because you'll see
all these younger kids growing up watching media today
and they're watching mindless media.
It's okay, but we gotta give people something
to challenge their mind, to make them think.
- What I'm getting out of this is that I should maybe
see if there are films like that because if there are,
I'd like to watch them and support them
because I think it's important to challenge the political climate.
- It's definitely a good idea because, you know,
there's gonna be people who can watch this forever.
We can look back and see that this was still a problem
back in 2017 or 2018.
We can see that this is something that hasn't progressed
and that we need to fix.
- You need to voice your opinion and you need to give
important subjects like this out there,
and especially now, with platforms like Instagram,
Twitter and YouTube, it's easier for one to do that.
Little by little, make the change.
(silence)