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The Great Dictator

  • G
  • 1940
  • 2 HR, 5 min
  • JUN 14
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Details
G
Released 1940
United States
2 hours, 5 minutes
Janus Films
Starring
  • Charles Chaplin
  • Paulette Goddard
  • Jack Oakie
Director

Charles Chaplin

In his controversial masterpiece The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin, in his first pure talkie, brings his sublime physicality to two roles: the cruel yet clownish “Tomainian” dictator and the kindly Jewish barber who is mistaken for him. Featuring Jack Oakie and Paulette Goddard in stellar supporting turns, The Great Dictator, boldly going after the fascist leader before the U.S.’s official entry into World War II, is an audacious amalgam of politics and slapstick that culminates in Chaplin’s famously impassioned speech.

Film Stills

Full Cast
Charles Chaplin Hynkel / Barber
Paulette Goddard Hannah
Jack Oakie Napaloni
Henry Daniell Garbitsch
Billy Gilbert Herring
Additional Credits
Charles Chaplin Director

Reviews

“The first full-blown talkie from the biggest star of the silent era, complete with a message that Chaplin couldn’t have sent more loudly or clearly.”

William Goss
Film.com

“Like all major Chaplin works, ‘Dictator’ was a cheaply, but methodically, made film, a cardboard act of humanist defiance, and, thanks to its purity of purpose, the cheesier the jokes get, the harder they land.”

Michael Atkinson
Village Voice

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