The Great Dictator (1940)

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.

Fmovies: I agree that the final speech is powerful, and stirring. It made my heart hurt (in a good way ;-) But I also have to say that the comedy is first-rate. When the Charlie and the pilot are unknowingly upside down and chatting away...when the pilot is serenely reminiscing about his girlfriend back home even as the downed plane plows right into the ground...when Hynkel delivers this vitriolic diatribe about 'the Juden' and the blandly impassive translator says, 'the Phooey has just made reference to the Jewish people' and 'the Phooey's heart is full of love to all mankind,' ...when Hynkel strips his hapless henchman of all his beautiful medals, spitting and fussing a mile a minute...I could go on and on! I think no one else on earth could play Hynkel as hilariously as Chaplin, but it might be fun to imagine modern comedians trying. ;-)

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.

The Great Dictator fmovies. This film entered production before WW2 began, but was not released until it was well under way. With significant fascist-sympathy in the US, and Chaplin himself being suspected as a communist sympathiser, The Great Dictator was a very courageous endeavour. Such risks in film-making - thinly veiled political statements - would be almost inconceivable today. Imagine the fallout if someone were to make an equally satirical film today which criticised the USA's foreign policy?

This film is hilarious, poignant and tragic. The tragedy is that Chaplin makes a plea for the madness to end, but it is already to late - for him and for us. A must see if you have any interest whatsoever in history, film-making, politics or sattire as an art-form.

The Great Dictator is a beyond-excellent film. Charlie Chaplin succeeds in being both extremely funny and witty and yet at the same time provides a strong statement in his satire against fascism. The anti-Nazi speech by Chaplin at the end, with its values, is one of filmdom's great moments. Throughout this movie, I sensed there was some higher form of intelligence, beyond genuinely intelligent filmmaking, at work.

Aside from giving this film its proper socio-historical credit as one of only 2 U.S films which condemned Hitler, Naziism and the Holocaust prior to U.S. involvement in WWII, it's a great time as well. Much of the humor remains visual, and some of the funniest (and most famous) scenes are done in the silent mode (e.g. the globe). Although a bit more lacking in continuity and editing than many of Chaplin's earlier films, to do it credit simply as a passable first effort at a new medium is to damn it with faint praise. It's unique. No serious student of film can neglect to see and appreciate The Great Dictator as a classic amalgam of film talents.