Director: Charlie Chaplin
Screenplay: Charlie Chaplin
Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Henry Daniell, Reginald Gardiner, Billy Gilbert, Maurice Moscovich
Running Time: 124 minutes
Genre: Comedy, satire, drama
Following the resounding defeat of Tomania in the First World War, ruthless fascist dictator Adenoid Hynkel (Chaplin), leader of the Double Cross Party, has risen to power. Meanwhile a poor Jewish barber (also Chaplin), who has suffered amnesia for the twenty years since the First World War, leaves the hospital and returns home to the ghetto. The barber soon falls in love with his neighbour Hannah (Goddard), and together they stand up against Hynkel's forces.
This was Chaplin's first true sound film, having come to fame during the silent era, Chaplin was one of the few film-makers to successfully continue making silent films well into the sound era. However, the film has dialogue-free passages, and most of the humour is the physical comedy that made Chaplin famous. It was also one of the first major Hollywood films to openly attack and mock Nazi Germany and Hitler himself (Hitler banned the film from being shown in Germany and Nazi occupied countries, although apparently he saw it himself twice - what he thought of it has not been recorded).
Given the full horror of the Nazis it does seem strange to portray them as basically a gaggle of dim-witted, bullying clowns (Chaplin himself said that he would not have made the film if he had been aware at the time of what the Nazis were actually doing), but it is an effective film, and quite brave for the time. The mockery is pretty scathing, and the film is genuinely funny, containing possibly Chaplin's funniest work. The film concludes with an impassioned final speech, one of the finest in cinema, and elevates the film to the pantheon of the great.
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