With no doubt Chaplin's finest work

Rating: 10/10 (6 December 2005)

This timeless masterpiece is deservedly a milestone in movie history and in my opinion it's Charlie Chaplin's best movie. I had already seen him in other great films (Modern Times is comedy gold) but The Great Dictator stands alone as a funny yet serious movie that delivers an important message by making fun of one of the worst atrocities that ever took place. He mocks war and extermination in order to become a messenger of peace (his final speech is one of the best monologues I've ever heard), and he doesn't hesitate to achieve that through a satire on WWII Germany and Adolf Hitler.
The movie's two protagonists are both played by Chaplin himself: one is a Jewish barber recovering from amnesia after a war accident who falls in love with Hannah (Paulette Godard), a girl who lives in the ghetto; the other one, who looks just like the barber, is dictator Adenoid Hynkel, who's planning to invade a couple of countries and overshadow "colleague" Napaloni (aka Mussolini) as well as exterminate the Jewish minority. Expect trouble, misunderstandings and lots of laughs...
This film is perhaps the best satire ever made, as Chaplin manages to entertain while still blaming the horrors committed by the Nazis, and he perfectly embodies both the romantic naive barber, who has one of the funniest lines in the movie ("Strange.And I thought you were an Aryan." "No, I'm a vegetarian."), and the megalomaniac, ego-driven, constantly shouting Hynkel (his improvised speeches in fake German are hilarious), delivering a movie that makes people laugh and also think. Like other Holocaust-related films (Schindler's List, La Vita è Bella, The Pianist) it makes sure we'll never forget the past and learn from our mistakes.