Great first exposure to Charlie Chaplin

Rating: 9/10 (7 February 2020)

The Great Dictator movie was directed by Charlie Chaplin and released in 1940. Cinematic devices; for sound the film was pretty much classical, for editing it was just the basic transition or scene shift panning was used, camera movement involved panning and tracking shots, eye level angles are most common in this film, it has digetic (Charlie chaplin playing the piano) and non diagetic sound. It takes place 20 years after the end of WWI. It was one of two American films which condemned Hitler and Naziism and the Holocaust prior to US involvement in WWII. Hynkel the dictator played by Charlie Chaplin wanted an Aryan race and to eliminate the Jewish people. The protagonist in the movie is also a Jewish barber (also played by Chaplin) who had suffered memory loss about WWI which had happened 20 years prior. The Jewish barber starts a relationship with a washerwoman named Hannah (played by Paulette Goddard). Commander Schulz of Hynkel's regime decides to spare Hannah and the barber. In the end all the Jews are spared by Hynkel. However, this was not done out of benevolence but rather a desire for world domination. This was a good movie because it had a lot of depth. My favorite part was the speech at the end when the Jewish barber is disguised as Hynkel himself and talks about what society needs. The message ultimately is that we need more togetherness and unity. It's an idealist message but touching nonetheless. The social change message of the film is just that and in particular, spare the Jews. Compared to Do the Right Thing there are a lot of similarities. The theme being about good and evil and characters positing that they know what that is.