The Great Dictator

The Great Dictator is a film directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin. The film, first released in October 15, 1940, is a satire on fascism and in particular Adolf Hitler and Nazism.

Cast and analyses

The film stars Chaplin as Hynkel and the barber, Paulette Goddard as Hannah, Jack Oakie as Napaloni, Reginald Gardiner as Schultz, Henry Daniell as Garbitsch and Billy Gilbert as Field Marshal Herring, an incompetent advisor to Hynkel. Chaplin stars in a double role as the Jewish barber (the Little Tramp in all but name) and the fascist dictator, clearly modeled on Adolf Hitler.

Related Topics:
Paulette Goddard - Jack Oakie - Reginald Gardiner - Henry Daniell - Billy Gilbert - Adolf Hitler

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The film contains several famous sequences: Chaplin, as the barber, shaving a customer in time to a radio broadcast of Johannes Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 5;recorded in one continuous take. The dictator's famous line "first we get the Jews, and then the brunettes" is typical of the film's satirical take on Hitler's anti-Semitic policies.

Related Topics:
Johannes Brahms - Hungarian Dance No. 5

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The film ends with the barber, having been mistaken for the dictator, delivering, in front of great audience, an address that also broadcasting in the radio to the nation following the Tomanian take-over of Osterlich (an obvious reference to the German Anschluss of Austria on March 12, 1938). The address is widely interpreted (see e.g. below) as a personal plea from Chaplin. Chaplin's plea, seen as an overtly political speech, may be part of the reason Chaplin was expelled from the United States during the McCarthy era. (See the article on Charlie Chaplin for further detail).

Related Topics:
Anschluss - Austria - March 12 - 1938 - McCarthy era - Charlie Chaplin

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In a more subtle political statement, the signs in the shop windows of the ghettoized Jewish population in the film are written in Esperanto. Esperanto was invented by Dr L.L. Zamenhof, a Polish Jew.

Related Topics:
Esperanto - L.L. Zamenhof

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