Film Review: The Great Dictator – 8.5/10

‘Greed has poisoned men’s souls…’

Silent film is often wrongly dismissed as being old fashioned, poor quality and suffering from an overreliance on slapstick. Five minutes with any Charlie Chaplin movie easily dispels this misconception. The Great Dictator, Chaplin’s last truly great movie, came at a time when silent film had become anachronistic and even the Little Tramp himself had been forced to reluctantly embrace ‘talkies’.

Hitler has been parodied so many times now that it feels old hat, but for Chaplin to release this biting satire at the start of WWII was a truly courageous move, particularly when coupled with his controversial monologue delivered straight to camera at the film’s conclusion, in which he implores the viewer to remember that ‘in this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful’. A statement that shouldn’t be contentious but which ended up being used as evidence against Chaplin in order to ‘prove’ that he harboured communist sympathies. Nonsense, of course…

Hapless dictator Adenoid Hynkel (Chaplin) is a war-mongering, Jew-hating maniac, prone to delivering violent and animated speeches in order to rile up his followers. Meanwhile, a Jewish barber (who looks suspiciously like the Little Tramp character we know and love, but apparently isn’t according to Chaplin himself) attempts to survive in a hostile world.

Chaplin plays on the fact that his onscreen persona was often compared to Hitler (due to his appearance mainly, but also due to the fact that Chaplin and Hitler were born four days apart from each other) in order to create a character that is hilarious, but also deeply cutting in its criticism of the führer. Whilst The Great Dictator may not have the heart or the pathos of some of Chaplin’s earlier films, it is still a typically ambitious work from a genius polymath who undoubtedly changed the course of cinematic history forever.

If silent film still feels too impenetrable then perhaps The Great Dictator is the best place to start with Chaplin’s oeuvre. Either way, it’s a masterpiece.