The Great Dictator
(1939-40, music restored in 2023)
Directed by: C. Chaplin
Writing credits: C. Chaplin
Starring: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Henry Daniell, Reginald Gardiner, Maurice Moscovich
Genre: comedy
Country: U.S.
Running time: 125 mins
Instrumentation List
Music composed by Charles Chaplin (1939-40)
Musical associate: Meredith Willson
Restored for live performance by Timothy Brock (2023)
3 Flutes (2nd and 3rd double on piccolo)
2 Oboes
3 B-flat Clarinets (2nd doubles on E-flat, 3rd doubles on Bass-clarinet)
2 Bassoons
4 Horns
3 Trumpets
3 Trombones (3rd is Bass-trombone)
1 Tuba
1 Timpani
3 Percussion
1 Piano/Celesta (doubles on synthesizer, which is ad-libitum)
1 Harp
1 Mandolin/guitar
String minimum: 12,10,8,8,6
List of percussion: 2 snare drums (deep and low tuning), Concert Bass Drum (Grancassa), Piatti, Suspended cymbal, Tam-tam, Finger cymbals, Tambourine, Triangle, Chimes, Glockenspiel, Xylophone
The Restoration of the score to The Great Dictator by Timothy Brock
In the year 2000 I went to Geneva to collect Chaplin materials for a recording session of a score I wrote for Kevin Brownlow's documentary, The Tramp and the Dictator (2001). This was the first time I stepped foot into the Chaplin archives, having just finished the restoration of Modern Times (1936), Chaplin's last silent film, and the first of 14 future score restorations I've carried out for the Chaplin estate over the last 24 years.
It was on this occasion I first saw the original hand-written score to The Great Dictator (1940), Chaplin's first venture into sound cinema.
Having had the privilege of restoring and conducting some of the most iconic Chaplin silent film scores, City Lights (1931), The Circus (1928), The Gold Rush (1925), The Kid (1921), my recurring thought about The Great Dictator was that it's a terrible shame that it isn't a silent film- because we'll never have the opportunity to hear this incredible score live-to-picture. Very few sound films, let alone classic films, were ever screened with live orchestra at this time, and I assumed both this score and Limelight (the music he won an Oscar for) were strictly limited to potential concert-suites. But now that technology affords us this chance, and that the Chaplin family are in agreement, it is yet another opportunity to bear witness to Chaplin's prowess as composer.
By 1940, Chaplin had been making films over 25 years, and had developed his (silent) cinematic presence into a unique language, with the aid of, and careful attention to, the music. As in most of his previous features, Chaplin spent months composing the score and working with his conductor, in this case a very young Meredith Willson. Also as usual, Chaplin was his own worst critic, discarding almost two-thirds of the total music he wrote for The Great Dictator. There were seven separate music cues cut in the first reel alone.
But what did remain are some of the most powerful and lively passages in the Chaplin oeuvre. Here he composes music that he identifies deeply within himself, as the Jewish barber. He composed a beautiful recurring theme he titled “Zigeuner” for scenes when his character is at his most vulnerable and downtrodden, a loopy and surrealistic waltz called “Stagger Dance” as he is accidentally hit on the head with a frying pan, and a Hebraic-inspired dance “The Ghetto” which reflects the spirit and fortitude of the Jewish people.
As for his Aryan persona as Adenoid Hynkel, Chaplin administers a strict diet of military marches, parade music, and pseudo-Grecian musical tableaux. In these pieces his personal message to the fascist regimes are clear. The first march is a bottom-heavy piece entitled “The Horse's A--manship (Assmanship) March” which makes great use of the ample lower brass, and is clearly a musical equivalent to thumbing one's nose at its intended target. He even wrote a tarantella march to accompany the arrival scene of Benzino Napaloni at the train station.
Chaplin is an ardent and life-long admirer of orchestral music, which he used in almost all of his feature films. He gave us two classical sequences for both of the characters he plays in The Great Dictator in genuine silent cinema language, neither of which contain any dialogue:
Johannes Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 5 provides the barber with some very animated accompaniment that inspires a lively shave on an unsuspecting customer (Chester Conklin).
To an even greater affect, the “Bubble Dance” uses, in a sublime panorama, the Prelude to Lohengrin by Richard Wagner. Here, Hynkel has the world on the tips of his fingers, as the delicate and ethereal nature of the music captures, so poetically, the fragility of the world on the brink of war.
I also believe that The Great Dictator contains one of the most beautiful and inspired compositions Chaplin ever wrote. “Hope Springs Eternal” is a slow and poignant passage which he inevitably slips in at the darkest moments of the film, as if to provide a glimmer of hope when all seems lost.
Chaplin knew and understood the power of music, which is why he always composed it himself. It's too important to leave it to other mere mortal composers.
