The Great Dictator - A Hollywood Wartime Classic

Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator is known for its strong political overtones, a mix of comedy with tragedy and as Chaplin's first ‘talkie,' and most commercially successful film. The movie is a searing spoof of German dictator Adolph Hitler, and the Third Reich. The film openly condemns Hitler, fascism and the Nazis all in one breath. Chaplin's final speech in the movie sums up his feeling toward Nazism as he references them as ‘machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts'.

The story begins during World War I with Chaplin portraying a bumbling Jewish private in the fictional nation of Tomania. During a rescue attempt the plane he is on crashes resulting in his spending the next 20 years in a hospital, and suffering from amnesia.

Meanwhile, Adenoid Hynkel (Hitler?) has become the merciless dictator of Tomainia and with two of his equally evil ministers, Garbitsch (Goebbels?) and Herring (Goring?), begins a ruthless oppression of all Jews. Having been recognized as a Jew, the privates barber's shop is visited by storm troopers who include Schultz, the pilot who also went down in the airplane crash twenty years before. The sight of Schultz helps to restore the barbers lost memory. Remembering the Jewish barber, Schultz orders the storm troopers to leave the barber alone. This action leads to both Schultz and the barber being sent to a concentration camp.

Wearing Tomanian uniforms, the barber who happens to be nearly an exact double of Hynkel, and Schultz escape with the barber assuming Hynkel's identity. The real Hynkel proceeds to invade the neighboring country of Osterlich. In the process, he is mistaken for the barber while the barber is mistaken to be Hynkel himself. After the successful invasion of the country, the barber (as Hynkel) is invited to deliver a victory speech.

This victory speech is one of the most famous scenes in the film. Motivated by the Nazi's violence and repression of Jews during the late 1930's, the speech delivered by Chaplin condemns the acts against the Jews and calls for equality and brotherhood among humans. The speech continues to reverse all of Hynkel's anti-Semitic positions with a call for democracy, urging everyone to work together in harmony.

The film is known as being ‘courageous,' coming at a time when Hitler was seen as a grave danger by the world. For today's audience, The Great Dictator is a shining example of bringing together comedy and tragedy while conveying a powerful message.

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Carl DiNello is an Article Author and Blog Owner whose passion is Hollywood history and those movies from the 1920's - 1950's that make up this rich history.

http://www.HollywoodMovieMemories.com Movies to Remember and Discover!

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