Not How It Seems: ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’

Remember that time Ian Fleming wrote a children’s story that was still loaded with a great deal of the intrigue of his more famous James Bond books? Remember when Roald Dahl co-wrote the screenplay and the Sherman brothers wrote the score? Remember when they called Hitler a giant baby? No? I must be getting ahead of myself.

In 1968, the fantastic adventure known as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was brought to life on the big screen. There isn’t much to be said about gender roles in this film as it’s presented very much as set in the past in a funny way. The most sexist thing that happens is when Professor Caractacus Potts tells Truly Scrumptious “if women are going to drive motorcars around, they should learn to operate one correctly.” What’s more interesting about this film is the metaphor that comes out in the fantasy portion of the movie.

We first meet Baron Bomburst, the ruler of Vulgaria in a fantasy sequence at the beach. He is an angry and cruel ruler who hits some of his henchmen over the head when he doesn’t get his way. His way in question is getting a car he decided he wanted and now believes he should be able to have. Of course, an action sequence at sea ensues, and our heroes ride away victorious, but we haven’t seen the last of the Baron.

He sends spies to attempt to kidnap Professor Potts. Instead, the bumbling spies successfully kidnap Truly’s father, Lord Scrumptious, and Grandfather Potts. When Potts is brought to the castle and says he isn’t the professor, the Baron threatens to have him executed immediately. He seems to have an executioner on retainer, and the executioner seems used to being called at short notice on the Baron’s whim. So not only does this guy feel entitled to whatever he wants (whether it be a car or a country), but he’s perfectly cool with just killing people randomly if they displease him.

We learn fairly early that this guy is obsessed with toys. He has a giant ride-on horse and everyone acts like this is totally normal. His entire staff seems built to appease him, which, when you know your boss has a massive temper, is probably smart. A portion of the staff has been kidnapped and held in a dungeon for years. One guy just came in to fix the phone and was never allowed to leave. They are tortured for failures in things that are impossible. This Baron is a nut! He even employs someone called “the child-catcher,” and this is where it starts to get good.

Caractacus, Truly, and the children have flown to Vulgaria in Chitty to rescue the older Mr. Potts. They touch ground near a small village that contains no children. The sound of the Baron’s men coming into town is enough to send the villagers running, and a toymaker signals for them to hide in his shop. He tells them that children are illegal in Vulgaria.

So… cruel, overbearing ruler? Check. Guy who insists on eradicating a group of people inconsistent with his view of who should be in the world? Also check. We are now in a Nazi Germany metaphor. The Baron is Hitler. Got it.

The toymaker hides them in a hidden underground room just in time for the gestapo officers soldiers to come into town and start breaking down doors in a search for hidden infidels children. The toymaker is threatened by the child-catcher, who is basically every cunning SS Officer from movies about the Holocaust. The child-catcher finds the hidden compartment in the floor and tells the toymaker that he will be executed if they find children in his residence. Luckily, the children are well-hidden in jack-in-the-boxes.

But, back to Hitler the Baron. He has a beautiful wife much younger than him who he feels is always spoiling his fun. Sound familiar? Think of it this way: Hitler was possibly involved with a number of women, many of the alleged relationships overlapping, and several of them ending in or being accented by suicide. At least three of the women he was rumoured to have dated, including Eva Braun (spoiler alert, they actually dated) were around 20 years his junior. He was also reported to be super controlling and distant in their relationships, earmarks of emotional abuse. So maybe it’s not a big surprise that they all seemed eager to end it all. But it’s rough to show emotional abuse in a kids’ movie, so it’s done in a slightly different way.

This guy is trying to kill his wife and make it look like an accident (presumably so there’s no political scandal). Not only that, but she knows it, and she’s terrified. Watch the look on her face after she gets down from that table in the video above. Not only does she feel powerless and frightened, she still feels like he’s too good for her (“I never will divine what magic made you mine/I only know I don’t deserve you”). Wowzers. She probably thinks she deserves the attempted murders for being so inferior.

Same guy though may not have successfully caught all the kids with his child-catcher, but the rest of the kids in town have had to go into hiding under the depths of the castle. And oddly, despite the child-catcher being employed right in the castle, we never see any kids other than the Potts children in the castle. So… have these kids all been executed? I’d say there’s a good possibility. In the meantime, while he doesn’t keep the kids in camps, they are kind of forced into a similar situation by the laws against them and the fact that if they get caught, they disappear. Also, everyone in his court appears to be frightened of children, like as though part of his political agenda involved convincing them that children were scary and bad and dangerous. Hmm, can’t think of another guy that convinced his country that an entire group of people were dangerous and needed to be outlawed.

Of course, they overthrow him because he was evil and crazy, but it seems undeniable that the Baron was inspired by a certain other murderous dictator. Ian Fleming, author of the novel, worked with British naval intelligence during World War II. His novel told a slightly different story, however, Roald Dahl, one of the screenplay writers was also involved in World War II as a fighter pilot and intelligence officer. It wouldn’t be that surprising if one or both of them wanted to call to mind recent dictators and stick it to Hitler by calling him a giant baby.

“Not How It Seems” (usually) attempts to support the argument that favorite movie musicals aren’t really the dated, anti-feminist films some people perceive them to be.

Emma Sedam

Emma Sedam is a music enthusiast from Marion, Ohio with a knack for fashion, pop-culture, and storytelling. She runs a weekly local radio show and an all-eras music blog. You can find her on most social media outlets.