Hitler Laughing: Comedy in the Third Reich

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In 1940, the year of its release, “The Great Dictator” was the third highest-grossing film in the U. Perhaps those letters provide enough justification if you wonder – as Charlie Chaplin did after he learned about the atrocities of the Nazis – whether it was morally appropriate to ridicule them, as he did in The Great Dictator. that] expresses the laugher's sudden discovery of his own momentary superiority over the person at whom he is laughing.

It was Chaplin’s portrayal of Hynkel (Hitler) and the Jewish Barber (Hynkel’s double), however, that has had the most influence on later portrayals. The book’s scenario is absurd – farcical – but author, Timur Vermes, said that he had painted Hitler as a human figure precisely to make today’s Germans have to think hard about him. Indeed, when Lucas began writing Die Briefe des Gefreiten Adolf Hirnschal he had “no idea whether there would be at least 50 people in Germany listening”.

Whether one accepts the sincerity of Chaplin’s post-war regret (12), one cannot dismiss his acknowledgement that historical retrospect affects reception of his movie. Eventually, Hitler gets into the swing of the modern world and becomes a celebrity and a politician. At a time when Germany was only beginning to address the Holocaust in films in a serious tone (25), Syberberg was finding humour and absurdity in Hitler, the Nazis and the consequences of the Third Reich. Take Hitler's thoughts on housing: he says young people need houses, so the state should build more houses.

Jokes that were off-hand, or glib, weren’t there to diminish the horror of the regime, but to forever draw attention to its risibility, to never aggrandise the perpetrators. Above all, by foregrounding the awareness of Nazi crimes within the plot, Brooks was able to forestall criticism. But, with the exception of The Producers (1967), the sublime American film by Mel Brooks about staging a Hitler musical (that surely wouldn’t get past the censoriousness just displayed at the Cambridge Union either), it is the Brits that have arguably been those most determined to laugh at the posturing idiocy of the regime.The barrage included gags from music-hall comedian Max Wall, and repartee on the BBC radio series It’s That Man Again, the title a reference to you know who.