The Great Dictator

Given the silly little moustache, it was inevitable that Charlie Chaplin would give the world an early insight into Hitler’s lunacy. As a European Chaplin was immensely disturbed by the rise of fascism and decided that the most effective response was that “Hitler must be laughed at.” In Hollywood at this time, it was still considered boldly leftist to speak out against Nazism and risk offending the German-American population as well as the isolationists who feared that America would be dragged into another European war. Chaplin’s dual role as the little Jewish barber and the egomaniacal hatemonger, Adenoid Hynkel, dictator of Tomania, has been acclaimed as one of the most clear-sighted responses to the horror that was about to envelop the world. The Little Tramp speaks for the first, and last, time on screen to demonstrate the utopian resistance to authority, which had always been at the heart of his funniest work.