The Great Dictator (1940)

• Year: 1940
• Released: 07 Mar 1941
• Country: United States
• Adwords: Nominated for 5 Oscars. 6 wins & 6 nominations total
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032553/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/Charlie_Chaplin_The_Great_Dictator
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English, Esperanto, Latin
• MPA Rating: G
• Genre: Comedy, Drama, War
• Runtime: 125 min
• Writer: Charles Chaplin
• Director: Charles Chaplin
• Cast: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie
• Keywords: world war ii, black and white, nazi, satire, amnesia,

8.4/10

The Great Dictator Storyline

During the last days of the First World War, a clumsy soldier saves the life of devoted military pilot Schultz. Unfortunately, their flight from the advancing enemy ends in a severe crash with the clumsy soldier losing his memory. After many years in the hospital, the amnesia patient gets released and reopens his old barber shop in the Jewish ghetto. But times have changed in the country of Tomania: Dictator Adenoid Hynkel, who accidentally looks very similar to the barber, has imposed his merciless grip on the country, and Jewish people are discriminated against. One day the barber gets in trouble and is brought before a commanding officer, who turns out to be his old comrade Schultz. The ghetto enjoys protection from then on. Meanwhile, Dictator Hynkel develops big plans: he wants to become Dictator of the whole world and needs a scapegoat for the public. Soon Schultz is being arrested for being too Jewish-friendly, and all Jews except those who managed to flee are transported into Concentration Camps. Hynkel is planning to march into Osterlich to show off against Napaloni, Dictator of Bacteria, who has already deployed his troops along the small country’s other border. Meanwhile, Schultz and the barber manage to escape, disguised in military uniforms. Luckily, Schultz and the barber are picked up by Tomanian forces and the barber is mixed up with Hynkel himself. The small barber now gets the once-in-a-lifetime chance to speak to the people of Osterlich and all of Tomania, who listen eagerly on the radio.

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The Great Dictator Movie Reviews

Immortal classic movie with dual character for Chaplin as barber Jew and Dictator Hynkel

This ingenious and innovate comedy packs many priceless moments and great sense of pace , though overlong . Chaplin’s satire with several classic scenes , he has dual role as a Jewish barber and dictator Hynkel , an offensive portrayal of Hitler . Then the barber is mistaken for the Hitlerian tyrant and there happens bemusing events . Funny and extraordinary acting all around , as the stunning co-stars Jack Oakie as Napolini (Mussolini-alike) , Henry Daniel as Gasbstich (Himmler-alike) and Billy Gilbert as Herring (Goering) . Chaplin’s first spoken film is brilliantly photographed by Karl Struss . This splendid film contains numerous amusing scenes , the funniest are the followings : 1) The one when during the WWI the barber-soldier along with a co-pilot are flying in a turned plane without to be aware 2) When Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tells overacting speeches , including a twisted microphone 3) Hynkel playing with an enormous world balloon 4) The Jew-barber shaving a man while fitting to Hungarian Dance : number 5 by Brahms 5) when Hynkel and Napolini each try to keep his body higher than other in a barber’s chair , among them .

Production on the movie started in 1937 and shot in 539 days when not nearly as many people believed Nazism was a menace , as was the case when it was released in 1940 ; however , this film was ultimately upstaged as the first anti-Nazi film satire . Hitler banned movie exhibition to the Germans due to its satire of him , and put him in his death list after his proposed conquest of America . The movie is co-starred by Paulette Goddard , third of his four wives , they were married in 1936 , although no announcement of the marriage was made later, one time finished The Great Dictator . The picture was released in 1940 , when Chaplin had survived a moral scandal by a paternity suit but a brush with the House of Un-American Activities was the signal for the USA to refuse him re-entry from Britain and he fled to Switzerland . This movie was Charles Chaplin’s biggest-ever box-office hit , grossing about $5 million at the time.

First Laughs And Last Laughs

Charlie Chaplin’s boldest film for its willingness to take on Adolf Hitler before nearly anyone else, “The Great Dictator” was also Chaplin taking on sound 11 years after everyone else. If it had to be the end of cinema’s greatest Silent Clown, he did what he could to take down history’s greatest monster in the process.

There are two reasons to like “The Great Dictator.” One is that Chaplin was on the side of the angels, at no small risk given his target’s ambitions. The other is he didn’t forget to make it funny.

Essentially a Prince And The Pauper remake, “Dictator” presents Chaplin as both Adenoid Hynkel, the cruel if inept “Phooey” (a. k. a. “Führer”) of Tomainia, and a Jewish World War I veteran, poignantly left unnamed as a nod to the Common Man, who only wants to work in peace at his barber shop. While Hynkel struggles with his two great passions, hating Jews and loving war, the barber finds love and a cause to believe in.

The comedy here can be categorized into the great and the good, with most of the former featuring Chaplin as Hynkel. He’s simply much funnier here as the bad guy, whether playing it broad (jumping secretaries, delivering speeches in hate-choked gobbledegook) or subtle (after shooting dead a man who claims to have “perfected” a bullet-proof suit, Hynkel simply turns and walks away with a three-word critique: “Far from perfect.”)

Hynkel is a character who solves Chaplin’s legendary problem with sound, whether dressing down his blubbering subordinate Herring (Billy Gilbert) or struggling to keep his composure when fellow dictator Napaloni (Jack Oakie) rebuffs his attempts at intimidation. Told by his right-hand man Garbitsch (Henry Daniell) that the people are objecting to sawdust in the bread, he huffs: “What more do they want? It’s from the finest lumber our mills can supply!”

The comedy around the barber gets more labored. Maybe it’s because much of it turns on the oppression of the Jews, though Chaplin here is trying to establish them as underdogs and rooting interest. It’s here the film becomes tricky, not because he is mocking the unmockable but because the characters we meet, including the Barber, are fairly bland and the humor patchy. There is some very funny material here, but excessive bits too where people get klonked with pans or splattered with whitewash. At least Chaplin avoided setting a pie fight in a starving ghetto.

The famous last scene is a great divider for many; in it Chaplin steps out of character to address us the audience about…what? The world needs more love and less hate, I guess. It’s a philosophically strangled message, both anti-fascist and oddly pacifistic at a time when Hitler’s legions were swallowing Europe, with Chaplin warning of “machine men with machine minds” as if he was still making “Modern Times” and punching the sky at times for lame effect.

To me it’s a crass way to end a good comedy, if perhaps necessary given the stakes involved. Hitler was real, and calling him out for what he was had real value in terms of rallying those called upon to defeat him. If it doesn’t transcend time as well as it could, “The Great Dictator” is still a fine comedy that delivers strong laughs and stronger historical resonances.

very good but uneven

This was Charlie Chaplin’s first all-talking film. Yes, there had been a little bit of sound and speaking inserted into his previous film, MODERN TIMES, but it was still essentially a silent film. So, it wasn’t until 1940 that the public got to hear Chaplin speak on film.

The movie is incredibly famous and has a stellar reputation. While I enjoyed the film, I was not nearly as impressed by this as Chaplin’s other full-length films of the mid-20s and 30s. That’s because I really felt annoyed by some of Chaplin’s dopey over-acting when he played Adenoid Hynkel–especially when he was giving his speeches. The silly pseudo-dialog just seemed akin to something a lesser comedian would have used (such as the Three Stooges). Plus, playing a funny Hitler is hard for me to take.

However, when Chaplin played the Jewish barber, he wasn’t especially funny (he really wasn’t intended to be a funny character) but he was a tremendous voice for reason and decency. This film should not be remembered as a comedy (especially since it doesn’t really excel there), but for its excellent acting and humanity. The final speech by the barber (impersonating Hynkel) is brilliant and almost brought tears to my eyes. Watch the film for this reason alone.