The Great Dictator
5 Oscar Nominations·National Film Registry
Rent/Purchase
Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.
What critics thought
Broadly celebrated both on release and in the decades since, the film is recognized as a landmark of political satire — brave, funny, and sharply humanist. The most persistent critical debate isn't about its quality but about a specific question of identity: whether the Jewish barber Chaplin plays is a continuation of his beloved Tramp or a genuinely distinct new character, a distinction scholars and reviewers still argue over. The concluding speech, in which Chaplin steps outside the comedy to address the audience directly, has always divided opinion on whether it belongs in the same film as the slapstick that precedes it.
“a truly superb accomplishment by a truly great artist”
Bosley Crowther·The New York Times
“Chaplin's The Great Dictator survives as a masterful integration of comedy, politics and satire. It stands as Chaplin's most self-consciously political work and the cinema's first important satire.”
Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema
“He [Chaplin] put the Little Tramp and $1.5 million of his own money on the line to ridicule Hitler.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
Genres
Comedy, Drama, War
Cast & Crew
DirectorCharlie Chaplin
StarringCharlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Reginald Gardiner, Henry Daniell
ComposerCharlie Chaplin, Meredith Willson
The Great Dictator
5 Oscar Nominations·National Film Registry
Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.
What critics thought
Broadly celebrated both on release and in the decades since, the film is recognized as a landmark of political satire — brave, funny, and sharply humanist. The most persistent critical debate isn't about its quality but about a specific question of identity: whether the Jewish barber Chaplin plays is a continuation of his beloved Tramp or a genuinely distinct new character, a distinction scholars and reviewers still argue over. The concluding speech, in which Chaplin steps outside the comedy to address the audience directly, has always divided opinion on whether it belongs in the same film as the slapstick that precedes it.
“a truly superb accomplishment by a truly great artist”
Bosley Crowther·The New York Times
“Chaplin's The Great Dictator survives as a masterful integration of comedy, politics and satire. It stands as Chaplin's most self-consciously political work and the cinema's first important satire.”
Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema
“He [Chaplin] put the Little Tramp and $1.5 million of his own money on the line to ridicule Hitler.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
Genres
Comedy, Drama, War
Cast & Crew
DirectorCharlie Chaplin
StarringCharlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Reginald Gardiner, Henry Daniell
ComposerCharlie Chaplin, Meredith Willson
Rent/Purchase