Film · 1940 · Comedy drama
The Great Dictator
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
1940
★ 6.5 editorial score
Chaplin attacked Hitler while America was still neutral, in his first talking picture: the two men were born four days apart, and the globe dance is the cruelest joke he ever staged.
“Chaplin's film, aimed obviously and scornfully at Hitler himself, could only have been funny, he says in his autobiography, if he had not yet known the full extent of the Nazi evil. As it was, the film's mockery of Hitler got it banned in Spain, Italy and neutral Ireland. But in America and elsewhere, it played with an impact that, today, may be hard to imagine.”
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