The Great Dictator

Chaplin, of course. 1940.
Let me quickly run through the technical elements. This film, with its usual wonderful simplicity of storytelling, evocative scenes meaning not too many are required, is the long take, long shot usually, often a side view of a street. The whole body is used much of the time, for physical purposes, but then we have movements in depending on the particular level and type of emotional engagement required. There are also a few pans around here, which, by 1940, is no surprise to have entered Chaplin's style. Also note the straight-on framings, not only for the literally or effectivly straight to camera addresses, but also for Hinkel in general. This framing, and the sparse sets, focusses our attention on the power of the speaker, on such an occassion, to hypnotise the audience (there is also a hypnosis in Chaplin's at once hillarious, and terrifying, nonsense teutonic language).
To our minds, to make it clear, this film is around and about the highest point humanity has reached. Why? It is perhaps not Chaplin's most balletic, and certainly his most beautiful. The ballet of 'Modern Times' and the striking images, high night contrast, of 'City Lights' are not as prominent here (it is of course beautiful and balletic all the same). But what Chaplin has done here is create a film that leaps outside its frame, that works as opposed and in relation to the world that is not the cinema in quite a remarkable way. Every scene, and the whole, are shot through with a moral goodness, courage, and self-reflexivity that is not, in what we have seen, surpassed.
Every scene of ballet, the globe, comedy of mismatches, running from the stormtroopers, is at once hillarious, but terrible in a way that applies to the world, not to a fictional universe. This film is, nearly, not a comedy; it is rather a roundabout way of trying to understand, and ultimately overcome, human suffering. One nearly feels uncomfortable laughing; one does not laugh at all maybe, but just is entered into some kind of attempt at understanding. Scenes like accidently starting to shave Paulette Goddard (beyond 'good', the scene and her) is hillarious, but in a way that doesn't ignore the unique horror, unnameable for that instance, of the situation. That we know, and Chaplin obviously knows we know, every situation is emotionally true, it happened, creates something of a mimesis that is, right now, what I like to call art; it is also goodness.
Scenes of playing with the globe, the pettiness of the dictators, is funny, mocking, but always with an awareness of its dire consequences. Worth noting is how the childish depiction of evil really preempts 'Blue Velvet' and takes it further; this is not a symbol of moral degradation, its a representation, and thus can be tackled, rather than just as in Lynch's work, considered.
The camp is simply not able to be shown; whether it was not known what happened, or Chaplin did not consider it approachable for the cinema, it is another example of this film's integrity (perhaps 'Nuit and Brouillard' in between Chaplin's two takes). How can a comedy film be constructed around this? And yet it is.
And then we have the final scene. This, for us, is the ultimate relation of art to life; Chaplin knows what is important, where art is not so much subsumed as it meets life, and he knows where he stands. And Chaplin, in our eyes, is, in all humbleness giving the highest compliment I can think of, a good man. There is even an awareness of his own mesmerising power, his own complicity in how he dictates to the audience; not a smart pathos, but a constant awareness. This film is, really.... It just needs to be remembered, and, more importantly than anything, acted with.