The Great Chaplin

Rating: 9/10 (10 December 2010)

With war raging in Europe and only a matter of time before America's entrance Charlie Chaplin took it upon himself to go where other moguls feared to tread with this courageous satirical broadside. The Great Dictator does not mince words with its comic evisceration of Adolf Hitler and his Fascist cronies. It is a savage mock-up in which only Chaplin alone could make a comic moment out of the fascist lynching of a Jew without devaluing the impact of the film's firm indictment and condemnation.
The film opens on a World War l battlefield with Charlie evoking his 1918 Shoulder Arms silent character manning Big Bertha. He suffers battle fatigue and is sent to a sanitarium to recuperate. Meanwhile Dictator Adenoid Hynkel capitalizes on his country's economic woes by scapegoating the Jews (and after them the brunettes). The vet unable to comprehend the passing of time returns to civilian life and his job as a Jewish Barber, unaware of his country's moral deconstruction. Hynkel continues to lust for world power while the Barber is brought up to speed by cruel storm troopers when fate intervenes.
This timely and absurdist black comedy on the eve of WW ll might be the finest piece of Hollywood political activism in Tinsel Town history. Chaplin could have easily stayed out of the argument but chose instead to wade in not with some prepared statement or sit down protest but with the full weight of his prodigious talent resulting in a motion picture that sits between Duck Soup and Dr. Strangelove in displaying the brilliance of satiric Voltarian discourse by way of Mack Sennett.
Chaplin's script and Hynkel's portrayal along with fellow cronies is devastatingly funny and demeaning reducing them to comic buffoons; removing their Conrad Veidt to vanquish them from another angle. Hynkel is a vainglorious Moe and Chaplin cuts him to the quick with a comic jabber and an unsettling but balletic display of lust for power. Henry Daniel as Garbige is chillingly serious and persuasive in mock contrast to funny but a bit over the top Billy Gilbert's Herring and Jack Oakie's Napaloni, though Mussolini newsreels from the era reveal not by much.
Chaplin does get overly preachy during the climax and it deflects from the no holds barred style of the humor and pace somewhat but overall it is a brave and audacious piece of film making in which someone can so powerfully assimilate pain and laughter without diluting the impact of either.