Chaplin's film advanced a stirring condemnation of the German and Italian dictatorsAdolf Hitler andBenito Mussolini, as well asfascism,antisemitism, andNazism. At the time of its first release, the United States was still at peace withNazi Germany and neutral during what were the early days ofWorld War II. Chaplin plays both leading roles: a ruthless fascist dictator and a persecuted Jewish barber.
On theWestern Front in 1918, a Jewish soldier fighting for theCentral Powers nation ofTomainia[8] valiantly saves the life of a wounded pilot, Commander Schultz, who carries valuable documents that could secure a Tomainian victory. However, after running out of fuel, their plane crashes into a tree and the soldier subsequently suffers memory loss. Upon being rescued, Schultz is informed that Tomainia has officially surrendered to theAllied Forces, while the Jewish soldier is carried off to a hospital.
Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel
Twenty years later, still suffering from amnesia, the Jewish soldier returns to his previous profession as a barber in aghetto. The ghetto is now governed by Schultz who has been promoted in the Tomainian regime, now transformed into adictatorship under the ruthlessAdenoid Hynkel. The barber falls in love with a neighbor, Hannah, and together they try to resist persecution by military forces. Thestormtroopers capture the barber and are about to kill him, but Schultz recognizes him and restrains them. By recognizing him, and reminding him ofWorld War I, Schultz helps the barber regain his memory.
Meanwhile, Hynkel tries to finance his ever-growing military forces by borrowing money from a Jewish banker called Hermann Epstein, leading to a temporary ease on the restrictions on the ghetto. However, ultimately the banker refuses to lend him the money. Furious, Hynkel orders a purge of the Jews. Schultz protests against this inhumane policy and is sent to aconcentration camp. He escapes and hides in the ghetto with the barber. Schultz tries to persuade the Jewish family to assassinate Hynkel in asuicide attack, but they are dissuaded by Hannah. Troops search the ghetto, arrest Schultz and the barber, and send both to a concentration camp. Hannah and her family flee to freedom at a vineyard in the neighboring country ofOsterlich.
Hynkel has a dispute with the dictator of the nation ofBacteria,Benzino Napaloni, over which country shouldinvade Osterlich. The two dictators argue over a treaty to govern the invasion, while dining together at an elaborate buffet, which happens to provide a jar ofEnglish mustard. The quarrel becomes heated and descends into a food fight, which is only resolved when both men eat the hot mustard and are shocked into cooperating. After signing the treaty with Napaloni, Hynkel orders the invasion of Osterlich. Hannah and her family are trapped by the invading force and beaten by a squad of arriving soldiers.
Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel (right) withJack Oakie as Benzino Napaloni (left)
Escaping from the camp in stolen uniforms, Schultz and the barber, dressed as Hynkel, arrive at the Osterlich frontier, where a victory parade crowd is waiting to be addressed by Hynkel. The real Hynkel is mistaken for the barber while out duck hunting in civilian clothes and is knocked out and taken to the camp. Schultz tells the barber to go to the platform and impersonate Hynkel, as it is the only way to save their lives once they reach Osterlich's capital. He announces that he (as Hynkel) has had a change of heart and makes an impassioned speech for brotherhood and goodwill, encouraging soldiers to fight for liberty, and unite the people in the name of democracy.
He then addresses a message of hope to Hannah: "Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me, and to all of us." Hannah hears the barber's voice on the radio. She turns toward the rising sunlight, and says to her fellows: "Listen."
Charlie Chaplin as a Jewish barber, a soldier during World War I who loses his memory for about 20 years. After having rescued Schultz during the war, he meets his friend again under radically changed circumstances.
Paulette Goddard as Hannah, the barber's neighbor. She lives in the ghetto next to the barber shop. She supports the barber against the Tomainian stormtroopers. (She was Chaplin's actual wife at the time.)
Maurice Moscovich as Mr. Jaeckel, an elderly Jew who befriends Hannah. Mr. Jaeckel is the renter of the barber salon. This was Moscovich's last film before dying at age 68.
Charlie Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator, or "Phooey",[9] of Tomainia (aparody ofAdolf Hitler, theFührer ofNazi Germany)[10] who attacks the Jews with his stormtroopers. He has Schultz arrested and has his stormtroopers hunt down the Jewish barber. Hynkel is later arrested by his own soldiers in the woods near the border, who mistake him for the barber.
Reginald Gardiner as Commander Schultz, a Tomainian who fought in World War I, who commands soldiers in the 1930s. He has his troops abstain from attacking Jews, but is arrested by Hynkel, after which he becomes a loyal ally to the barber. He later leads the invasion of Osterlich and helps the barber pretend to be Adenoid Hynkel in his (successful) attempt at saving Osterlich.
Henry Daniell as Garbitsch, a parody ofJoseph Goebbels,[10] and Hynkel's loyal and stoic Secretary of the Interior and Minister of Propaganda.
Billy Gilbert as Herring, a parody ofHermann Göring,[10] and Hynkel's Minister of War. He supervises demonstrations of newly developed weapons, which tend to fail and annoy Hynkel.
Grace Hayle as Madame Napaloni, the wife of Benzino who later dances with Hynkel. In Italy, scenes involving her were all cut out of respect to Benito Mussolini's widowRachele until 2002.
According to Jürgen Trimborn's biography of Nazi propaganda filmmakerLeni Riefenstahl, both Chaplin and French filmmakerRené Clair viewed Riefenstahl'sTriumph of the Will together at a showing at the New YorkMuseum of Modern Art. FilmmakerLuis Buñuel reports that Clair was horrified by the power of the film, crying out that this should never be shown or the West was lost. Chaplin, on the other hand, laughed uproariously at the film. He used it to inspire many elements ofThe Great Dictator, and, by repeatedly viewing this film, Chaplin could closely mimic Hitler's mannerisms.[11]
Trimborn suggests that Chaplin decided to proceed with makingThe Great Dictator after viewing Riefenstahl's film.[12] Hynkel's rally speech near the beginning of the film, delivered in German-soundinggibberish, is a caricature of Hitler's oratory style, which Chaplin also studied carefully in newsreels.[13]
The film was directed by Chaplin (with his half-brotherWheeler Dryden as assistant director), and written and produced by Chaplin. The film was shot largely at theCharlie Chaplin Studios and other locations around Los Angeles.[14] The elaborate World War I scenes were filmed inLaurel Canyon. Chaplin andMeredith Willson composed the music.
Chaplin wanted to address the escalating violence and repression of Jews by the Nazis throughout the late 1930s, the magnitude of which was conveyed to him personally by his European Jewish friends and fellow artists.Nazi Germany's repressive nature andmilitarist tendencies were well known at the time.Ernst Lubitsch's 1942To Be or Not To Be dealt with similar themes, and also used a mistaken-identity Hitler figure. But Chaplin later said that he would not have made the film had he known of the true extent of the Nazis' crimes.[4] After the horror of the Holocaust became known, filmmakers struggled for nearly 20 years to find the right angle and tone to satirize the era.[15]
In the period when Hitler and his Nazi Party rose to prominence, Chaplin was becoming internationally popular. He was mobbed by fans on a 1931 trip to Berlin, which annoyed the Nazis. Resenting his style of comedy, they published a book titledThe Jews Are Looking at You (1934), describing the comedian as "a disgusting Jewish acrobat" (although Chaplin was not Jewish).Ivor Montagu, a close friend of Chaplin's, relates that he sent the comedian a copy of the book and always believed that Chaplin decided to retaliate with makingDictator.[16]
In the 1930s, cartoonists and comedians often built on Hitler and Chaplin having similar mustaches. Chaplin also capitalized on this resemblance in order to give his Little Tramp character a "reprieve".[17]
In his memoirMy Father, Charlie Chaplin, Chaplin's sonCharles Chaplin Jr. described his father as being haunted by the similarities in background between him and Hitler; they were born four days apart in April 1889, and both had risen to their present heights from poverty. He wrote:
Their destinies were poles apart. One was to make millions weep, while the other was to set the whole world laughing. Dad could never think of Hitler without a shudder, half of horror, half of fascination. "Just think", he would say uneasily, "he's the madman, I'm the comic. But it could have been the other way around."[18]
Chaplin prepared the story throughout 1938 and 1939, and began filming in September 1939, six days after the beginning ofWorld War II. He finished filming almost six months later. The 2002 TV documentary on the making of the film,The Tramp and the Dictator,[19] presented newly discovered footage of the film production (shot by Chaplin's elder half-brotherSydney) that showed Chaplin's initial attempts at the film's ending, filmed before thefall of France.[4]
According toThe Tramp and the Dictator, Chaplin arranged to send the film to Hitler, and an eyewitness confirmed he saw it.[4] Hitler's architect and friendAlbert Speer denied that the leader had ever seen it.[20] Hitler's response to the film is not recorded, but another account tells that he viewed the film twice.[21]
Some of the signs in the shop windows of the ghetto in the film are written inEsperanto, a language that Hitler condemned as ananti-nationalist Jewish plot to destroy German culture because it was aninternational language whosefounder was a Polish Jew.[22]
I've seen [Chaplin] take a soundtrack and cut it all up and paste it back together and come up with some of the dangdest effects you ever heard—effects a composer would never think of. Don't kid yourself about that one. He would have been great at anything—music, law, ballet dancing, or painting—house, sign, or portrait. I got the screen credit forThe Great Dictator music score, but the best parts of it were all Chaplin's ideas, like using theLohengrin "Prelude" in the famous balloon-dance scene.[23]
Chaplin in the globe scene
According to Willson, the scene in which Chaplin shaves a customer to Brahms'sHungarian Dance No. 5 had been filmed before he arrived, using a phonograph record for timing. Willson's task was to re-record it with the full studio orchestra, fitting the music to the action. They had planned to do it painstakingly, recording eight measures or less at a time, after running through the whole scene to get the overall idea. Chaplin decided to record the run-through in case anything was usable. Willson later wrote, "by dumb luck we had managed to catch every movement, and that was the first and only 'take' made of the scene, the one used in the finished picture".[23]
James L. Neibaur has noted that among the many parallels that Chaplin noted between his own life and Hitler's was an affinity forWagner's music.[24] Chaplin's appreciation for Wagner has been noted in studies of the director's use of film music.[25] Many commentators have noted Chaplin's use of Wagner'sLohengrin prelude when Hynkel dances with the globe-balloon.[24][26][27] Chaplin repeated the use of theLohengrin prelude near the conclusion when the exiled Hannah listens to the Jewish barber's speech celebrating democracy and freedom.[28] The music is interrupted during the dictator's dance but it is heard to climax and completion in the barber's pro-democracy speech.
Commenting on this, Lutz Peter Koepnick writes in 2002,
How can Wagner at once help emphasize a progressivist vision of human individualism and a fascist preview of absolute domination? How can the master's music simultaneously signify a desire for lost emotional integrity and for authoritative grandeur?Chaplin's dual use ofLohengrin points towards unsettling conjunctions of Nazi culture and Hollywood entertainment. LikeAdorno, Chaplin understands Wagner as a signifier of both: the birth offascism out of the spirit of the total work of art and the origin of mass culture out of the spirit of the most arduous aesthetic program of the 19th century. Unlike Adorno [who identifies American mass culture and fascist spectacle], Chaplin wants his audience to make crucial distinctions between competing Wagnerianisms. Both...rely on the driving force of utopian desires, on...the promise of self-transcendence and authentic collectivity, but they channel these mythic longings in fundamentally different directions. Although [Chaplin] exposes the puzzling modernity of Nazi politics, Chaplin is unwilling to write off either Wagner or industrial culture. [Chaplin suggests] Hollywood needs Wagner as never before in order to at once condemn the use of fantasy in fascism and warrant the utopian possibilities in industrial culture.[29]
Billboard bicycle of the movie with its title in Spanish,El gran dictador, inBuenos Aires, 1941
Chaplin's film was released nine months after Hollywood's first parody of Hitler, the short subjectYou Nazty Spy! by theThree Stooges, which premiered in January 1940.[30][self-published source?] Chaplin had been planning his feature-length work for years, and began filming in September 1939. Hitler had been previously allegorically pilloried in the 1933 German filmThe Testament of Dr. Mabuse, byFritz Lang.[31]
The film was well received in the United States at the time of its release and was popular with the American public. For example,Bosley Crowther ofThe New York Times called the film "a truly superb accomplishment by a truly great artist" and "perhaps the most significant film ever produced."[32] The film was also popular in the United Kingdom, drawing 9 million to the cinemas,[33] despite Chaplin's fears that wartime audiences would dislike a comedy about a dictator. The film earnedtheater rentals of $3.5 million from the U.S. and Canada[34] and $5 million in total worldwide rentals.[3]
The film was banned in several Latin American countries, where there were active movements of Nazi sympathizers.[35]
During the film's production, theNational Government ofNeville Chamberlain had announced that it would prohibit its showing in the UK in keeping with its policy ofappeasement towards Germany.[36] By the time the film was released, however, Britain was at war with Germany and the film was welcomed in part for its obviouspropaganda value. In 1941, London'sPrince of Wales Theatre screened its UK premiere. The film had been banned in many parts of Europe, and the theatre's owner, Alfred Esdaile, was apparently fined for showing it.[37]
When the film was released in France in 1945, it became the most popular film of the year, with admissions of 8,360,048.[38] The film was voted at No. 24 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazineCahiers du cinéma in 2008.[39] In 2010,The Guardian considered it the 22nd-best comedy film of all time.[40] The film was voted at No. 16 on the list ofThe 100 greatest comedies of all time by a poll of 253 film critics from 52 countries conducted by theBBC in 2017.[41]
Chaplin biographerJeffrey Vance concludes his lengthy examination of the film, in his bookChaplin: Genius of the Cinema, by asserting the film's importance among the great film satires. Vance writes, "Chaplin'sThe Great Dictator survives as a masterful integration of comedy, politics and satire. It stands as Chaplin's most self-consciously political work and the cinema's first important satire."[42]
Vance further reports that a refugee from Germany who had worked in the film division of the Nazi Ministry of Culture before deciding to flee told Chaplin that Hitler had watched the movie twice, entirely alone both times. Chaplin replied that he would "... give anything to know what he thought of it."[43]
Chaplin (as the barber) absentmindedly tries to shaveGoddard (as Hannah) in this image from the film trailer.
There is no critical consensus on the relationship between Chaplin's earlierTramp character and the film's Jewish barber, but the trend is to view the barber as a variation on the theme. French film directorFrançois Truffaut later noted that early in the production, Chaplin said he would not play The Tramp in a sound film.[44] Turner Classic Movies says that years later, Chaplin acknowledged a connection between The Tramp and the barber. Specifically, "There is some debate as to whether the unnamed Jewish barber is intended as the Tramp's final incarnation. Although in hisautobiography he refers to the barber as the Little Tramp, Chaplin said in 1937 that he would not play the Little Tramp in his sound pictures."[45]
InMy Autobiography, Chaplin wrote, "Of course! As Hitler I could harangue the crowds all I wished. And as the tramp, I could remain more or less silent."The New York Times, in its original review (16 October 1940), specifically sees him as the tramp. However, in the majority of his so-called tramp films, he was not literally playing a tramp. In his review of the film years after its release,Roger Ebert says, "Chaplin was technically not playing the Tramp." He also writes, "He [Chaplin] put the Little Tramp and $1.5 million of his own money on the line to ridicule Hitler."[46]
Critics who view the barber as different include Stephen Weissman, whose bookChaplin: A Life speaks of Chaplin "abandoning traditional pantomime technique and his little tramp character".[47] DVD reviewer Mark Bourne asserts Chaplin's stated position: "Granted, the barber bears more than a passing resemblance to the Tramp, even affecting the familiar bowler hat and cane. But Chaplin was clear that the barber is not the Tramp andThe Great Dictator is not a Tramp movie."[48]The Scarecrow Movie Guide also views the barber as different.[49]
Annette Insdorf, in her bookIndelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (2003), writes that "There was something curiously appropriate about the little tramp impersonating the dictator, for by 1939 Hitler and Chaplin were perhaps the two most famous men in the world. The tyrant and the tramp reverse roles inThe Great Dictator, permitting the eternal outsider to address the masses".[50] InThe 50 Greatest Jewish Movies (1998), Kathryn Bernheimer writes, "What he chose to say inThe Great Dictator, however, was just what one might expect from the Little Tramp. Film scholars have often noted that the Little Tramp resembles a Jewish stock figure, the ostracized outcast, an outsider."[51]
Several reviewers of the late 20th century describe the Little Tramp as developing into the Jewish barber. InBoom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s, Thomas Schatz writes of "Chaplin's Little Tramp transposed into a meek Jewish barber",[52] while, inHollywood in Crisis: Cinema and American Society, 1929–1939,Colin Shindler writes, "The universal Little Tramp is transmuted into a specifically Jewish barber whose country is about to be absorbed into the totalitarian empire of Adenoid Hynkel."[53] Finally, inA Distant Technology: Science Fiction Film and the Machine Age,J. P. Telotte writes that "The little tramp figure is here reincarnated as the Jewish barber".[54]
A two-page discussion of the relationship between the barber and The Tramp appears in Eric L. Flom's bookChaplin in the Sound Era: An Analysis of the Seven Talkies. He concludes:
Perhaps the distinction between the two characters would be more clear if Chaplin hadn't relied on some element of confusion to attract audiences to the picture. WithThe Great Dictator's twist of mistaken identity, the similarity between the barber and the Tramp allowed Chaplin break [sic] with his old persona in the sense of characterization, but to capitalize on him in a visual sense. The similar nature of the Tramp and barber characterizations may have been an effort by Chaplin to maintain his popularity with filmgoers, many of whom by 1940 had never seen asilent picture during the silent era. Chaplin may have created a new character from the old, but he nonetheless counted on the Charlie person to bring audiences into the theaters for his first foray into sound, and his boldest political statement to date.[55]
In 1997,The Great Dictator was selected by theLibrary of Congress for preservation in the United StatesNational Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".[5]
The February 2020 issue ofNew York Magazine listsThe Great Dictator as among "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars."[58]
The film holds a 92% "Fresh" rating on the review aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes based on 48 reviews, with an average rating of 8.90/10. The consensus reads, "Charlie Chaplin demonstrates that his comedic voice is undiminished by dialogue in this rousing satire of tyranny, which may be more distinguished by its uplifting humanism than its gags."[59] Film criticRoger Ebert ofChicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four and included it in hisGreat Movies list.[46]
Chaplin's half-brotherSydney directed and starred in a 1921 film calledKing, Queen, Joker in which, like Charles Chaplin, he played thedual role of a barber and ruler of a country which is about to be overthrown. More than twenty years later, in 1947, Charles Chaplin was sued over allegedplagiarism withThe Great Dictator.Konrad Bercovici claimed that he had created ideas such as Charles Chaplin playing a dictator and a dance with a globe, and that Charles Chaplin had discussed his five-page outline for a screenplay with him for several hours.[36] Yet, apparently, neither the suing party nor Charles Chaplin himself brought up Sydney Chaplin'sKing, Queen, Joker of the silent era.[60] The case,Bercovici v. Chaplin, wassettled, with Charles Chaplin paying Bercovici $95,000 ($1.34 million in2024).[61] In return, Bercovici conceded that Chaplin was the sole author. Chaplin insisted in his autobiography that he had been the sole writer of the movie's script. He agreed to a settlement, because of his "unpopularity in the States at that moment and being under such court pressure, [he] was terrified, not knowing what to expect next."[62]
A digitally restored version of the film was released onDVD andBlu-ray bythe Criterion Collection in May 2011. The extras feature color production footage shot by Sydney Chaplin, a deleted barbershop sequence from Charlie Chaplin's 1919 filmSunnyside, a barbershop sequence from Sydney Chaplin's 1921 filmKing, Queen, Joker, a visual essay by Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance titled "The Clown Turns Prophet", andThe Tramp and the Dictator (2002),Kevin Brownlow and Michael Kloft's documentary exploring the lives of Chaplin and Hitler, including interviews with authorRay Bradbury, directorSidney Lumet, screenwriterBudd Schulberg, and others. It has a booklet featuring an essay by film criticMichael Wood, Chaplin's 1940The New York Times defense of his movie, a reprint from critic Jean Narboni on the film's final speech, andAl Hirschfeld's original press book illustrations.[11]
In 2004, theBritish Film Institute (BFI) published a collection of essays on Chaplin andThe Great Dictator in the bookChaplin: The Dictator and the Tramp, edited by Frank Scheide and Hooman Mehran as part of the BFI's creation of theChaplin research programme.[63][64] In 2005, the British Film institute in conjunction with theUniversity of Southampton and theLondon College of Communication hosted "The Charles Chaplin Conference" in London to coincide with the institute's establishment of theChaplin research programme.[65][66]
The final speech of the film has been sampled in more than 40 songs,[68] artists such asColdplay andU2 have played the speech during live shows,[69] and coffee companyLavazza used it in a television advertisement.[70]
^abFriedman, Barbara G. (2007).From the Battlefront to the Bridal Suite: Media Coverage of British War Brides, 1942–1946. University of Missouri Press.ISBN978-0-8262-1718-9.Charlie Chaplin's 1940 filmThe Great Dictator, satirizing Hitler and Nazism, grossed $5 million worldwide and became a classic.
^Chaplin, Charlie (1964).My Autobiography. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 392.Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have madeThe Great Dictator, I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis.Online at theInternet Archive
^The spelling of the country's name is derived from the numerous local newspapers flashed onscreen between 14 and 15 minutes into the film that indicate the end of World War I, such asThe Tomainian past, thus establishing the proper spelling.
^Kamin, Dan; Eyman, Scott (2011).The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin: Artistry in Motion. Scarecrow Press. pp. 154–155.ISBN978-0-8108-7780-1.
^Singer, Jessica (September 14, 2007)."The Great Dictato".Brattle Theatre Film Notes. Archived fromthe original on January 3, 2011. RetrievedDecember 28, 2020.
^Internationally co-produced by four production companies, including BBC,Turner Classic Movies, and Germany's Spiegel TV
^Hoffmann, Frank W.; Bailey, William G. (1992).Mind & Society Fads. Haworth Press. p. 116.ISBN978-1-56024-178-2.Between world wars, Esperanto fared worse and, sadly, became embroiled in political power moves. Adolf Hitler wrote inMein Kampf that the spread of Esperanto throughout Europe was a Jewish plot to break down national differences so that Jews could assume positions of authority.... After the Nazis' successful Blitzkrieg of Poland, the Warsaw Gestapo received orders to 'take care' of theZamenhof family.... Zamenhof's son was shot... his two daughters were put inTreblinka death camp.
^Peter Conrad.Modern Times, Modern Places How Life and Art Were Transformed in a Century of Revolution, Innovation and Radical Change. Thames & Hudson. 1999, p. 427
The Great Dictator essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010ISBN0826429777, pages 320–321
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