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Charlie Chaplin The Great Dictator
Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber who accidentally looks very similar to the dictator recklessly joins a beautiful girl and her neighbors in rebelling.
23 November 1871, Odessa, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire [now Ukraine]
26 February 1905, Chelsea, Massachusetts, USA
18 February 1867, Halle an der Saale, Province of Saxony, Prussia [now Saxony-Anhalt, Germany]
December 25, 1886 in New York City, New York, USA
9 January 1886, Russia
5 October 1886, Chicago, Illinois, USA
2 September 1898, Flushing, New York, USA
13 May 1891, Brooklyn, New York, USA
5 December 1906, Brooklyn, New York, USA
26 February 1874, Cheshire, England, UK
February 15, 1898 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
28 January 1906, Cumberland, Maryland, USA
25 July 1896, Three Rivers, Michigan, USA
5 March 1894, London, England, UK
3 June 1910, Whitestone Landing, Long Island, New York, USA
3 January 1890, New York City, New York, USA
31 August 1892, Brixton, London, England, UK
April 2, 1896 in Stuttgart, Germany
1 August 1913, France
8 March 1897, Washington, District of Columbia, USA
1 December 1884, Århus, Denmark
April 24, 1899 in Monroe, Louisiana, USA
6 June 1894, Ireland
28 May 1887, New York City, New York, USA
May 20, 2012
...a great movie because it works as a film, and because it is a document of courage and faith, the prime exhibit in Chaplin's humanist brief ... Dictator is a comedy, the work of a clown, but it is no joke. Chaplin had lethal intent.
July 22, 2010
Despite the film's weaknesses, Chaplin's lampooning of Hitler is a moment of comic genius, complemented by Jack Oakie's ridiculously exaggerated portrayal of the Mussolini-like Italian fascist
May 20, 2011
...stared evil in the face long before the rest of Hollywood even thought it was possible.
April 04, 2017
The lessons remain, and the strength of his statement still inspires his descendants - professional or otherwise - to follow his example.
May 30, 2011
While it is not the greatest of Charlie Chaplin's feature films, it is certainly his bravest, if not one of the bravest films ever made.
December 23, 2009
Like all major Chaplin works, Dictator was a cheaply, but methodically, made film, a cardboard act of humanist defiance, and, thanks to its purity of purpose, the cheesier the jokes get, the harder they land.
January 18, 2013
The only trouble is that such perfect scenes as this are followed by more conventional passages which would be funny enough in an average picture but let one down in a film that deals so ambitiously with so great a theme.
June 01, 2011
The first full-blown talkie from the biggest star of the silent era, complete with a message that Chaplin couldn't have sent more loudly or clearly.
October 09, 2008
It's when he is playing the dictator that the comedian's voice raises the value of the comedy content of the picture to great heights.
February 09, 2006
The representation of Hitler is vaudeville goonery all the way, but minus the acid wit and inventive energy that Groucho Marx managed.
September 03, 2010
Chaplin is at his most profound in suggesting that there is much of the Tramp in the Dictator, and much of the Dictator in the Tramp.
September 03, 2010
Through no fault of Chaplin's, during the two years he was at work on the picture dictators became too sinister for comedy.
