One of the Greatest politcal satires ever!

Rating: 10/10 (18 October 2003)

There are a few films that are destined to be great, because they are challenging and daring. They are so because they challenge the times in which they are made. The highlights amongst these films are Kubrick's "Dr Strangelove" and "The Great Dictator", a film that everybody in Hollywood said nobody wanted to see. Thank god Chaplin made this film anyway.
What Chaplin offers in this film and why it is so important as a historical piece today is an insight into the eccentricities of fascism that dogged the early 20th century. Chaplin and his actors masterfully copied the mannerism of the important figures of the time and then amplified and exaggerated them. We are therefore shown the Third Reich in all its dark and loony glory, in all its bloodthirsty expansionist policy and inhuman treatment of `sub-humans'.
Chaplin's rendition of Hynkel is masterfully put forward as jibberish, with dramatic poses and movements that include him pouring water down his pants. The famous ballet with the globe was Chaplin's ultimate film moment that symbolizes just how reckless the Nazi expansion policy really was. However some of the most entertaining moments come from Napoloni, who visits Â‘Hynki' to discuss the invasion of Austerlitz by Tomania. A direct parody of the appeasement policy and the breaking of the Stresa front, Chaplin does not only have a go at Nazi Germany, but also at the people that just let it happen.
Chaplin's final speech in which the Jewish barber takes the place of Hynkel, questioning Hitler's own Arianness, is filled with a plea to the world to stop war forever instead of simply saying that the world should stop the Nazis. This film should be compulsory in every country and in every school and the fact that the world is still embroiled in wars all over shows that this film is perhaps more relevant today than it was in 1940. When one looks at this film one can see, Robert Mugabe, Mohammed Al Caddaffi, Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush. Obviously we have not learnt the lesson yet!