My Review of The Great Dictator (1940) directed by Charlie Chaplin

 The Great Dictator (1940) was marketed as the first post-Tramp movie of Charlie Chaplin after he assured people retired the character after the release of Modern Times (1936), but in-fact this film would be the last appearance of the character as who would end-up playing a nameless Jewish barber with amnesia in fake-Germany and strike an obvious resemblance the other role Chaplin plays as the villain antagonist fake-Adolf Hitler. The protagonist and antagonist never meet, but their resemblance is crucial to the film's ending-climax and it's commentary on World War II up to that point in 1940.

This film is famous for (among other things) being Chaplin's first talking movie—and he has a lot to talk about about. As his home country was being pummeled by the Germans and France had already fallen to the Nazis, he watched the USA be neutral for the most part, to some being vocally supportive of the Nazis at worst. Leftist that he was, Chaplin used his physical and rhetorical talents to try and convince American audiences that they needed to oppose fascism. Chaplin's physical set-pieces like the globe sequence (my personal favorite) and the barbershop scenes shows that his comedy and art could still translate to sound-era comedy. I think the witty dialogue also showed his British wit was not lacking. Also, I think everyone knew what to expect of mocking Hitler's infamous speech patterns. Of course, where trouble starts is when he stops going for comedy and gets serious. You can tell how raw his emotions were and how desperate he was to rally Americans to support the War-effort or have the War end entirely. This makes some scenes when Chaplin filibusters and just writes what he feels seem clunky to us today. But when it comes to the ending speech, it is the filibuster that the rest of the movie depends on and is necessary and evergreen in its message,

The film was made only a year after Germany invades Poland and the Holocaust had not officially-begun. This was still post-Nuremburg Laws (laws that were modeled after the USA's Jim Crow Laws) and Kristallnacht, so people knew of the the discrimination and repression of Jewish people in Germany (and how much it resembled the discrimination and repression of African-Americans in the United States). I wonder if Chaplin really thought a country as racist (and antisemitic) as the United States  could be convinced to oppose a nation a nation it ideologically-sympathized with. In 2025, I wonder this now.

On a side note: having fake-Mussolini have a New York Italian accent was an inspired choice😆.