The Great Dictator is a comedy film directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin. First released in October 1940, it was Chaplin's first true talking picture, and more importantly was the only major film of its period to bitterly satirize Nazism and Adolf Hitler.
The film is unusual for its period, as the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany. Chaplin's film advanced a stirring, controversial condemnation of Hitler, fascism, ant...
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The Great Dictator is a comedy film directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin. First released in October 1940, it was Chaplin's first true talking picture, and more importantly was the only major film of its period to bitterly satirize Nazism and Adolf Hitler.
The film is unusual for its period, as the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany. Chaplin's film advanced a stirring, controversial condemnation of Hitler, fascism, antisemitism, and the Nazis, the latter of whom he excoriates in the film as "machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts".
The film was Chaplin's first "talkie", as well as his most commercially successful film.
The film begins during a battle of World War I. The protagonist is an unnamed Jewish private (Charlie Chaplin), who is a barber by profession and is fighting for the Central Powers in the army of the fictional nation of Tomainia (an allusion to ptomaine poisoning), comically blundering through the trenches as an explosive fight...
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