I was watching a youtube video of the famous speech by Charlie Chaplin in ‘The Great Dictator’, that combined with fond memories of Saddam Hussein in Hot Shots Part Deux and Kim Jong Il in Team America World Police made me wonder if there are any records of real life dictators actually watching movie depictions of themselves and what their reactions to it were? Preferably if its known that they actually sat down and watched the respective movie rather than reports of it given to them by other people.
We can expand this to politicians in general but I think dictators or leaders of totalitarian states would be more interesting.
Kim Jong-Un orchestrated a hack into Sony Pictures and released untold damaging corporate secrets because he didn’t like how he was represented in “The Interview.” I don’t know if he actually watched it though.
Of course not all movie portrayals of dictators are necessarily satirical or otherwise hostile. According to the Wikipedia article on the Soviet actor Aleksei Dikiy:
(No cites for that section, and the whole article is pretty light on references, so take it for what it’s worth.)
I’ve heard the same thing about Stalin, he liked his official actor in soviet films.
I vaguely recall one story where there was a propaganda movie about WW2 where Stalin visits Berlin himself. Stalin was really impressed by the film and said something like ‘its a shame that that never actually happened’.
Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, because it really is a fantastic speech but I’ve seen this mentioned on the youtube clip, but on checking it seems that the entire movie was a ‘talky’ for Chaplin, not just that specific scene. (unless I’m being needlessly pedantic and people are using ‘first words’ in a looser sense)
Neglecting a 1931 newsreel appearance, Chaplin’s voice was first heard on film in Modern Times (1936) where he sings a song in a made-up language. Not sure if that should count as his “first words on film.” PT 109 was released in June, 1963. Cliff Robertson was JFK’s personal choice for the lead (Jackie allegedly wanted Warren Beatty to play her husband).
“When President Kennedy saw early footage of parts of the film, his only complaint was that Cliff Robertson was parting his hair on the right, while JFK’s hair parted on the left. Robertson dutifully parted his hair on the left for the film.” - from IMDB
Tangentially related to the thread topic, I recall reading that Nikita Khrushchev was greatly offended by the film Can-Can (1960) on a visit to the U.S. I suspect it was because of the risque dancing and not because he thought he was being depicted by any of the dancers.
They were really worried about being portrayed badly or possibly revealing secrets, so their public face, the Italian-American Civil Rights League, sent observers to watch the set. One particular bodyguard caught Coppola’s eye so he offered him a role. You know him as Luca Brasi. Later, their relationship with mob films greatly cooled, so later many members loved the films.
Chaplin was not Jewish, though the rumor followed him for a big part of his life. The Nazis thought he as Jewish, but he’d denied that at as early as 1925 (as per wiki). There are suggestions that he was Roma or Traveller. Was Charlie Chaplin a Gypsy? | Movies | The Guardian
An FBI agent later wrote that just about every mobster home on which he executed search warrants had VHS tapes or, later, DVDs of The Godfather and other Mafia movies. He wondered if, perhaps on some level, it was a way for mobsters to learn how to act like mobsters.
Although Kim Jong-Il did not publicly personally react to his depiction in Team America: World Police, the North Korean government asked the Czech government to ban the movie. (The Czechs refused to do so.)
