The Great Dictator

March 1, 2017 tom.raymond Charlie Chaplin Movie reviews 0

Image of Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, as Adenoid Hynkel playing with the globe of the world.

Review of The Great Dictator, one of Charlie Chaplin’s greatest films. His first movie without the Little Tramp, mocking Hitler and the Nazis

The Great Dictator (1940), starring Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jackie Oakley, Reginald Gardiner, Henry Daniell, Billy Gilbert

The Great Dictator is possibly the most well-known of Charlie Chaplin’s films.  It was a timely satire on Nazism and fascism in general, and Adolph Hitler in particular. In it, Charlie Chaplin plays a double role:  Adenoid Hynkel, autocratic dictator of Tomania who blames the Jewish people for all of society’s ills.  And a Jewish Barber who happens to be the spitting image of Hynkel.Contrary to what some people believe, the Jewish Barber was not Chaplin’s world-famous tramp character, although they clearly share some of the same traits.

The film is a true classic, with the famous “dance with the globe”.  Where Hynkel dances with an oversized inflated image of the globe, fantasizing about his eventual conquests. The film ends with the famous “Look Up, Hannah” speech which is, perhaps, both verbose and even hokey, but it fits properly and plays well.

Charlie Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel, angrily giving a speech
Charlie Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel, angrily giving a speech

I rate it 4 clowns on a 5-clown scale.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Editorial review of The Great Dictator, starring Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jackie Oakie, Billy Gilbert, courtesy of Amazon.com

The Great Dictator, starring Charlie Chaplin as the Jewish barber, and Paulette Goddard

Since Adolf Hitler had the audacity to borrow his mustache from the most famous celebrity in the world – Charlie Chaplin – it meant Hitler was fair game for Chaplin’s comedy. (Strangely, the two men were born within four days of each other.) The Great Dictator, conceived in the late thirties but not released until 1940, when Hitler’s war was raging across Europe, is the film that skewered the tyrant. Chaplin plays both Adenoid Hynkel, the power-mad ruler of Tomania, and a humble Jewish barber suffering under the dictator’s rule. Paulette Goddard, Chaplin’s wife at the time, plays the barber’s beloved. The rotund comedian Jack Oakley turns in a weirdly accurate burlesque of Mussolini, as a bellowing fellow dictator named Benzino Napaloni, Dictator of Bacteria.

Chaplin himself hits one of his highest moments in the amazing sequence where he performs a dance of love with a large inflated globe of the world. Never has the hunger for world domination been more rhapsodically expressed. The slapstick is swift and sharp, but it was not enough for Chaplin. He ends the film with the barber’s six-minute speech calling for peace and prophesying a hopeful future for troubled mankind. Some critics have always felt the monologue was out of place, but the lyricism and sheer humanity of it are still stirring. This was the last appearance of Chaplin’s Little Tramp character, and not coincidentally it was his first all-talking picture. –Robert Horton

Trivia

Image of Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, as Adenoid Hynkel playing with the globe of the world.
  • Charlie Chaplin got the idea when Alexander Korda noted that his screen persona and Adolf Hitler looked similar. Chaplin later learned they were both born within a week of each other, were roughly the same height and weight, and struggled in poverty until they reached success in their respective fields.
  • Charlie Chaplin stated that had he known the true extent of the Nazi atrocities, he “could not have made fun of their homicidal insanity.”
  • The German spoken by the dictator is complete nonsense. The language in which the shop signs, posters, etc in the “Jewish” quarter are written is Esperanto.  A language created in 1887 by Dr. L.L. Zamenhof, a Polish Jew.
  • This was the last movie in which Chaplin used the “Tramp”-Outfit, i.e. the bowler hat and the walking cane, but although Chaplin appears to be playing The Tramp once again, that character had actually been retired in his previous film, Modern Times (1936). Chaplin was said not to consider Great Dictator a Tramp film.
  • The scene where Chaplin dances with a globe came from a 1928 home movie where Chaplin also toyed with a globe.
  • Chaplin named Paulette Goddard’s character after his mother, Hannah.

Reactions

The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin) looking down on Hannah (Paulette Goddard)
  • When released, Hitler had it banned from all occupied countries. Curiosity eventually got the best of him and he had a print brought in through Portugal. He screened it not once, but TWICE. When told of this, Charlie Chaplin stated, “I’d give anything to know what he thought of it.”
  • In Spain, the film was banned until dictator Francisco Franco died, in 1975.
  • Chaplin said wearing Hynkel’s costume made him feel more aggressive.  Those close to him remember him being more difficult to work with on days he was shooting as Hynkel.
  • Chaplin began to feel more uncomfortable lampooning Hitler the more he heard of Hitler’s actions in Europe. Ultimately, the invasion of France inspired Chaplin to change the ending of his film to include his famous speech.

Cast of characters

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Professional clown for over 25 years - happily married, with 5 children and 1 grandson