The Great Dictator is about the violence of war, the corrupting influence of power, and the persecution of Jews during World War II. Still it’s one of the funniest movies ever made.
Charles Chaplin made the movie while the U.S. was still technically at peace with Nazi Germany, and many were still pushing to keep Americans out of the “European war.” Chaplin’s film was a prescient assault on Hitler and National Socialism.
In World War One, a nameless Jewish barber (Charles Chaplin) is injured fighting for the fictional nation of Tomania, and spends years in a veterans’ hospital. He eventually wanders home, unaware that the Hitler-like Adenoid Hynkel (also Chaplin) has seized absolute power and turned Tomania into an anti-semitic war machine.
While defending his shop from storm troopers, the barber meets the beautiful Hannah (Paulette Goddard -- near the end of her long romantic relationship with Chaplin,) and becomes an unwitting hero to the nascent resistance movement developing in the ghetto.
Meanwhile, Hynkle plots to conquer the neighboring nation of Osterlich and become Emperor of the World (a scheme commemorated in Chaplin’s delicate, fiendish dance with an inflatable globe.)
In a classic mistaken identity ruse, the poor Jewish barber is taken for merciless Hynkle, leading to a heartfelt plea from Chaplin himself for humanity and justice -- surely one of the greatest speeches ever captured on film.
Almost every scene in The Great Dictator is perfect: the iconic globe dance, Hynkle’s poorly-translated address to the Tomanian people, the musical shaving scene, an upside-down airplane, all capped by Chaplin’s heartrending final soliloquy.
But the film is still more that the sum of its parts (no matter how glorious those parts may be.) See it when you want to believe that there’s still good in the world -- and watch Charlie Chaplin get hit with a frying pan while you’re at it.
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