The Great Dictator

Movie Review: The Great Dictator

Year of Release: 1940
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Cast: Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Reginald Gardiner, Henry Daniell, Billy Gilbert

Plot outline: In Chaplin's satire on Nazi Germany, dictator Adenoid Hynkel has a double ... a poor Jewish barber ... who one day is mistaken for Hynkel (IMDb).

The Great Dictator is Charlie Chaplin's first talking movie and possibly his most well-known movie. It is a political satire with an important message. In this movie, Chaplin wants to give the audience more than just a slapstick comedy. He plays a double role as autocratic dictator of Tomainia, Adenoid Hynkel, who blames the Jews for all of society's problems and a simple Jewish barber who happens to be the spitting image of the dictator. Released in 1940, with significant fascist sympathy in the US and Chaplin himself being suspected as a communist sympathizer, this movie was a very courageous endeavour. Such risks in film-making would be almost inconceivable today. Imagine the fallout if someone were to make an equally political satire today which criticised US foreign policy? Aside from giving this movie its proper socio-historical credit as the first Hollywood movie which condemned Hitler and facism prior to US involvement in WWII, it's a great fun as well. It has many hilarious sequences, e.g. the scenes of Chaplin with Billy Gilbert (Field Marshal Herring) - in one scene Hynkel not only removes all of Herring's medals, but also removes all of his buttons on his shirt, revealing a striped shirt with suspenders, and then slaps him; the scenes of Chaplin with Jack Oakie (Benzini Napaloni) - the scene when Napaloni's train arrives and confuses where to stop, the scene when they try to outmatch each other and prove their superiority; and the most famous scene of Chaplin dancing with an oversized inflated image of the globe, fantasizing about his eventual conquests. The movie ends with six minute moving "Look up, Hannah" speech which though seems improbable coming from the timid Jewish barber, but nevertheless has a terrible strength, is still updated and plays very well. Chaplin succeeds in being both funny and witty, and yet at the same time provides a strong statement in his satire against fascism. This is really a masterpiece of humanity and a great demonstration of how courageous Chaplin was. This is a must see movie if you have any interest in history, film-making, politics or satire as an art-form.

My judgement: ***1/2 out of 4 stars