Great Dictator, The [Warner Brothers]

John, just to let you know, Chaplin himself once said that, had he known the full extent of the Nazis' atrocities, he would not have made a comedy about Hitler. I learned this while taking a college course called Re-screening the Holocaust.

Yes, "The Great Dictator" is a satire/parody, but the idea is that the movie produces laughs--which gives one pause when considering that what Hitler and Co. did was not funny at all (unless you're a sick bastard).

This is one of the reasons why I find "Life Is Beautiful" unbearable--Roberto Benigni mugs for an entire movie that results in "Oh, I survived because my father acted like a buffoon." At the very least, in "The Great Dictator", Chaplin addresses the audience as himself, making a serious plea for tolerance and peace (he's no longer playing either Adenoid Hynkel or the barber at the end of the movie--he has "stepped out of the fiction and into the real world").

I opened my mouth too soon! Oops! I missed that paragraph that you wrote that has the exact thing that I wrote in my post. :p

Yeah, but your heart was in the right place.

John