Charlie Chaplin
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I will say that there are fleeting moments of biting satirical genius that are reminiscent of the very clear inspiration of for this film Chaplin’s The Great Dictator ; But the 3 minutes of the film’s total success drown in (an albeit short – but drawn out) 84 minute running time.
The plucky nature of Baron Cohen’s protagonists harken back to Chaplin — and the easiest point of comparison is “The Great Dictator,” right down to the crude Western imitation of foreign language that forms Wadiya’s native tongue — but the creators of Wadiya owe a tremendous debt to “Duck Soup” and its own fictionalized dictatorship, Freedonia.
Certainly in 2012, a brutal dictator qualifies as an easy target for comedy (that wasn't true in 1940, when Charlie Chaplin released The Great Dictator , to which The Dictator implicitly nods).
A few thoughts present themselves: first, despite how apparently the movie wants to be regarded as a raunchy, 21st Century The Great Dictator , the film in which Charles Chaplin and Jack Oakie played such inspired parodies of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, there's no way for the film to breathe as much as a satire as it always seems that it wants to for the straightforward reason that Aladeen isn't a "real" dictator.
Cohen is subtly making his case to be known as the Charlie Chaplin of our time by echoing Chaplin's Hitler satire, The Great Dictator .
In “The Dictator” Cohen matches Charlie Chaplin’s teachable monologue from Chaplin’s 1940 masterpiece “The Great Dictator” with a third-act soliloquy that will ruffle more than a few feathers.
He is enmeshed in a series of cogs, as Chaplin was in “ Modern Times ” (1936), and the homage that King pays to Wes Anderson, not least to the jailbreak in “ The Grand Budapest Hotel ” (2014), is positively slavish.
Paddington 2 exhibits its bona fides as a film for all ages with subtle nods to Modern Times (a Chaplin-esque mustache), The Untouchables (a line about bringing a knife to a gunfight), and the overproduced musicals of the ‘30s (Busby Berkeley would have been proud) alongside the more obvious kid-friendly elements.
Cineastes will delight in the witty homage (Paddington's prison break incorporates a marvellous nod to Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times ).
When it comes to comedy, Paddington 2 draws inspiration from Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, both who gets nods in this with allusions to The General and Modern Times.
Other inventive bits include an equally accident-ridden window-washing gig, a prison break that features an homage to Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, and a climactic train chase that's equal parts humorous and thrilling.
The sort of pandering that children’s films are often prone to—the ear-toothbrush sequence in the first movie, for instance—has largely been replaced by jokes that are charming for charming’s sake, and the references, which range from Chaplin’s City Lights to Sondheim’s Follies , are lovely even if the specifics may fly over younger viewers’ heads.
A pivotal moment where Arthur crashes a posh screening of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times is Phillips’s less-than-subtle reminder that it has always been the clowns in this world who reflect society’s reality back to us.
And if everybody who knows any bit of “Batman” lore knows where this is going, if the violence crosses the “repellent” line into gratuitous, if the Chaplin references (“Modern Times,” and his song “Smile”) and Sinatra notes do little to dress up an ugly age referencing an earlier ugly age, that’s all of a piece.
(These observations would be more daring if Phillips et al. didn’t wallpaper the film with their obvious influences — casting Robert De Niro as a late-night host in a King of Comedy homage and setting one scene at a theater screening of Modern Times — but what can you do?) Phoenix leans into the anarchic madness of Arthur at every turn, and it’s an affecting, disturbing lead turn, zagging into every lurch of the film’s tone with remarkable grace.
After a man in clown-face kills three yuppies on the subway, protesters take to the streets wearing clown masks and demonstrate outside a fancy benefit screening of “Modern Times” (providing an excuse for a scene in which Arthur/Joker laughs uproariously at Charlie Chaplin’s famous roller-skating scene).
Furthermore, another cringing scene sees Fleck sneak into a theatre as a bellboy while the wealthy and powerful, including Wayne, watch Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) and presumably eat caviar.
There’s a scene in “Joker” when a theater full of tuxedoed socialites gather for a charity screening of Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times.”
Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Directed by Taika Waititi
influenced by The Great Dictator (1940)
Themes Characters
Movies like “The Great Dictator” and “To Be or Not to Be” have taken similar approaches and gone on to become revered comedy classics that still manage to pack a considerable comedic punch today.
Jojo Rabbit has been called many things – an anti-hate satire, as the poster and trailers proclaim; a descendant of Chaplin’s The Great Dictator; a misstep of catastrophic proportions comparable to Jerry Lewis’s The Day the Clown Cried.
Despite the efforts of the Third Reich, Nazi jokes are as old as Nazis, predating even Charlie Chaplin's pompous "Adenoid Hynkel" in 1940's The Great Dictator.
But of course, absurd as the idea may seem, some attempts to wring humor from the horrors of Nazi Germany have stood the test of time: Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator,” Ernst Lubitsch’s “To Be or Not To Be,” Mel Brooks’ “The Producers,” and Roberto Benigni’s “Life Is Beautiful,” to name a few.
Granted that Waitiki’s nutty version of the infamous German dictator does not have the same lofty legs of lunacy as witnessed by Mel Brooks’ impishly warped “Springtime for Hitler” nor does it compare to Charlie Chaplin’s Hitler knockoff, Adenoid Hynkel, from “The Great Dictator.”
Despite what Disney and Fox Searchlight's trailer marketing might lead you to believe, Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit is neither the quirky New Zealander's riff on Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, nor the feature-length version of Mel Brooks' fake "Springtime for Hitler" musical from The Producers.
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Directed by Wes Anderson
influenced by The Great Dictator (1940)
Themes
That leads to a madcap pursuit also involving Captain Henckels (Edward Norton) of the proto-fascist military police (with a character name certainly meant to recall Hynkel of Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator”); a prison break led by a brooding convict named Ludwig (Harvey Keitel); the intervention of a secret society of master concierges (among whose members are Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Fisher Stevens, Waris Ahluwalia and Wally Wolodarsky); a surrealistically funny ski-and-toboggan chase, ending with a homage to Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest”; and a gun battle at the hotel itself.
Thomson delivers a crushingly harsh verdict on Anderson’s film: “It relates to the atmosphere and texture of Stefan Zweig like an achingly sweet pastry on a tin plate at Auschwitz-Birkenau.” There’s a long, complex debate to be had on the question of whether it is appropriate or adequate to view the horrors of modern history through a lens of humor or indeed whimsy—a debate that would have to span from To Be or Not to Be and The Great Dictator to their echo in the Zig-Zag militia in The Grand Budapest Hotel .
As the 1932 storyline comes to a close, the fictional Zubrowka is invaded entirely by a Nazi-like army (calling for immediate comparisons with Ernst Lubitsch‘s To Be or Not To Be, Powell and Pressburger‘s A Matter of Life and Death, and Charlie Chaplin‘s The Great Dictator; esteemed company it certainly earns).
Movies like “The Great Dictator” and “To Be or Not To Be” lampooned Nazis with forceful satire.
WALL·E (2008)
Directed by Andrew Stanton
influenced by City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936)
Visuals
As such, "WALLâ?¢E" recalls the physical humor and poetry of silent comedies, specifically those of Charlie Chaplin -- "City Lights" for the romance, "Modern Times" for the satire, maybe?
Director-screenwriter Andrew Stanton and his Pixar legions have referenced such films as "City Lights" and "Modern Times" and "The Navigator," not simply as a film school exercise but to increase the sentimental resonance of the story and situate it among the classics.
As such, "WALLâ?¢E" recalls the physical humor and poetry of silent comedies, specifically those of Charlie Chaplin -- "City Lights" for the romance, "Modern Times" for the satire, maybe?
Director-screenwriter Andrew Stanton and his Pixar legions have referenced such films as "City Lights" and "Modern Times" and "The Navigator," not simply as a film school exercise but to increase the sentimental resonance of the story and situate it among the classics.
The emotional heart of the film is Maggiorani’s relationship with his son, played by Enzo Staiola, a bond that recalls such classic cinematic father-son pairings as Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan in “The Kid” and Roberto Benigni and Giorgio Cantarini in “Life Is Beautiful.”
Bergman has stated numerous times that he doesn't believe in God, but Winter Light's climax (where Ericsson, in Märta's company, begins his evening sermon before an otherwise empty church, in a nonetheless beatific close-up that parallels the final image of Chaplin's titularly similar City Lights) suggests that the director does believe in the essential goodness of the human spirit, the soulful desire to carry on with our many rituals of existence because of the knowledge that somehow, some way, our actions always manage to touch and to inspire at least one other.
…(a darkly cynical spin on Chaplin’s Modern Times)…
…a comedic social satire thriller that operates in a manner reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times…
…particularly when the Wizard toys with a balloon map of Oz, a la Chaplin in the THE GREAT DICTATOR.
…whose balloon dance and squawking horns allude to Charlie Chaplin in “The Great Dictator”…
Life Is Beautiful (1997)
Directed by Roberto Benigni
influenced by The Great Dictator (1940)
Characters Themes
When Benigni hilariously impersonates a Mussolini-regime official, the scene owes an obvious debt to The Great Dictator, but Benigni earns the comparison.
It's an expert bit of clowning (Benigni owes a debt to Chaplin's The Great Dictator), but you can feel the pit growing in your stomach even as you giggle.
Roberto Benigni’s finest hour arrived in 1997 when the triple-threat writer/director/actor delved deep into Charlie Chaplin territory — see “The Great Dictator” (1940).
He fancies himself as the heir to Chaplin and this film is surely meant to be his version of "The Great Dictator".
And, if there is another reason for not disapproving offhand of the film's comic handling of this horrific context, then let's bring up Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.
Sing and a mute street vendor develop a relationship that recalls Chaplin’s Little Tramp and the blind flower girl in CITY LIGHTS.
The movie refers glancingly to dozens of Hollywood classics, from West Side Story to City Lights, but at heart it is a debt of honor richly paid by Stephen Chow to his martial-arts forebears and to the traditions that shaped his sensibility.
Minions (2015)
Directed by Kyle Balda
influenced by The Gold Rush (1925), Modern Times (1936)
Visuals
The filmmakers are conscious of this silent heritage, judging by how they borrow from Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush and Modern Times .
The filmmakers are conscious of this silent heritage, judging by how they borrow from Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush and Modern Times .
An irascible bully who proves to have a heart of gold, Pacino's character seems manufactured by a computer programmed with box-office grosses, and it's disheartening to find a movie that professes to take a stand on behalf of personal integrity ripping off Chaplin's theme song from City Lights without credit to generate some of its pathos.
The diabolical logic in Match Point reminds me of nothing so much as Charles Chaplin’s much-underestimated Marxist logic in Monsieur Verdoux (1947), though Woody is less a rabid Marxist than a resigned fatalist with respect to the ways of the world.
Los espectadores somos Charlie Chaplin en una de las más famosas escenas de Modern Times, amarrados a una silla ingiriendo la constante serie de referencias, cameos, chistes internos, guiños y momentos emblemáticos de los comics que jamás imaginamos ver algún día en pantalla.
There are plenty of other outlandish jokes here, such as a French character that's a spitting image of Gerard Depardieu, a rather outré depiction of a fictional European island (whose inhabitants include lots of cheese-eating kids, a bunch of drunks and a somewhat offensively rendered woman with major facial hair) and, in what may be the film’s piece de resistance, two laugh-out-loud Minion sketches: one that may be a direct reference to the song-and-dance number in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, and a prison sequence scored to Pharrell’s hit “Freedom.”
The teaming of crusty old man and chipper scamp echoes dozens of films, from Chaplin's "The Kid" to Disney's "Pinocchio" to "The Bad News Bears" and even to "Bad Santa."
From its magnificent “Rhapsody in Blue” opening to its City Lights-inspired ending, it’s Allen’s most perfect blend of comedy and drama.
In this way, Sorry to Bother You is proudly linked to the deep tradition of visually distinctive and narratively idiosyncratic comedies of cinema history like Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich and Adaptation by Spike Jonze, Robert Altman's M*A*S*H and Brewster McCloud , Terry Gilliam's Brazil , and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove— dating all the way back to the earliest masterworks like Chaplin’s Modern Times .