The most perfect film I've ever seen

Rating: 10/10 (17 January 2012)

Though I am ashamed to admit it, this is in fact the only Chaplin film I have (so far) seen. This film absolutely stunned me, Chaplin, wrote, directed, produced and played the lead role in 'The Great Dictator' and dear god did he do a good job.
In terms of acting, Chaplin is just unbelievable. There is an incredible combination of silent and spoken performance, and it evokes both extreme laughter and sadness. One can easily the remnants of his silent career in this and his mannerisms, his physical acting is hilarious. The speech at the end of the film is probably the best I've ever seen in any film, his delivery is just incredible, its thought provoking and full of emotion. Chaplin is just the absolute maestro some of the clowns who perform nowadays should most definitely take heed, individually I've never seen a comic performance or dramatic performance that good, but together, its left me speechless, I actually can't convey how good he was in words.
Script wise, its again just fantastic. The characters' names to start with are hilarious (herring and garbage being my favourite) whilst the absolute nonsense he spouts when speaking German is also very good. There is also silliness but with such close attention to detail, most notably, I thought, was checking his tie in the bald man's shining head or the ridiculous moments where he goes into to be sculpted or painted before dashing out again a few seconds later. The speech at the end is legendary. This is quite seriously worthy of some great politician and its deliverance, as I have said, was outstanding.
I can't really think of anything else to say and I actually feel as though I haven't even nearly done justice to this piece of cinema. It must go down as one of the greatest films ever made.