Movie review - The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin

• Directed by: Charlie Chaplin
• Produced by: Charlie Chaplin
• Written by: Charlie Chaplin
• Music by: Charlie Chaplin
• Edited by: Willard Nico, Harold Rice
• Release date: October 15, 1940 (New York), March 7, 1941 (London)
• Language: English

          

 

         

          The Great Dictator is a 1940 American political satire comedy-drama film written, directed, produced, scored by and starring British comedian Charlie Chaplin, following the tradition of many of his other films. Having been the only Hollywood filmmaker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, this was Chaplin's first true sound film.

          The Great Dictator was popular with audiences, becoming Chaplin's most commercially successful film. Modern critics have also praised it as a historically significant film and an important work of satire, and in 1997, it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United State National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". The Great Dictator was nominated for five Academy Awards - Outstanding Production, Best Actor, Best Writing, Best Supporting Actor for Jack Oakie and Best Music.

          The Great Dictator was Chaplin’s first film with dialogue. Chaplin plays both a little Jewish barber, living in the ghetto, and Hynkel, the dictator ruler of Tomainia. In his autobiography Chaplin quotes himself as having said: “One doesn’t have to be a Jew to be anti Nazi. All one has to be is a normal decent human being.”

          Chaplin and Hitler were born within a week of one another. “There was something uncanny in the resemblance between the Little Tramp and Adolf Hitler, representing opposite poles of humanity, ” writes Chaplin biographer David Robinson, reproducing an unsigned article from The Spectator dated 21st April 1939: “Providence was in an ironical mood when, fifty years ago this week, it was ordained that Charles Chaplin and Adolf Hitler should make their entry into the world within four days of each other….Each in his own way has expressed the ideas, sentiments, aspirations of the millions of struggling citizens ground between the upper and the lower millstone of society. Each has mirrored the same reality – the predicament of the “little man” in modern society. Each is a distorting mirror, the one for good, the other for untold evil.”

          Chaplin spent many months drafting and re-writing the speech for the end of the film, a call for peace from the barber who has been mistaken for Hynkel. Many people criticized the speech, and thought it was superfluous to the film. Others found it uplifting. Regrettably Chaplin’s words are as relevant today as they were in 1940.