Charles Spencer Chaplin shot to fame as his character the Tramp in silent films. Growing up in London, his life was hard with no father present and he was sent to a workhouse before he was 9. When he was 14 his mother was committed to an asylum. But he took to the stage early and by the time he was 19 he had joined a touring company that took him to the US. He quickly attracted many fans with the Tramp and at the age of 26 he was one of the most well paid people in the world. By the time he was 30 Charlie Chaplin had co-founded United Artists.
With complete control, Chaplin made several successful, silent films throughout the 1920’s. By the 1930’s sound was possible but he resisted the call to make talking pictures until The Great Dictator in 1940. Chaplin wrote, directed, scored, produced and starred in the film.
At the time The Great Dictator was made the United States was neutral and not yet at war with Germany. The film was Chaplin’s damnation of Hitler, Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s fascism. The Great Dictator has him taking on two very different roles, with both allowing his amazing physical comedy to be its own language. As Dictator Adenoid Hynkel, the Phooey of Tomainia, Chaplin showed Hynkel’s madness in a ballet-like dance. With the globe as his partner, Chaplin expertly portrayed the glee in Hynkel’s demented dreams of becoming “emperor of the world.”
In a second role that’s closer to his Tramp persona Chaplin is an unnamed Jewish barber returning home years after a head injury received in the Great War. Chaplin shows the barber’s confusion as he attempts to return to a normal life unaware of the changes that have happened to Tomainia in his absence.
There is something else that he is unaware of, he is a doppelganger of the country’s leader, Hynkel. The only difference is a small bit of white hair and their paths will cross to the benefit of all.
Throughout the movie Charlie Chaplin’s slapstick humor keeps the film from tumbling into the darkness of it’s subject matter, yet not avoiding the reality that Chaplin is satirizing. The film ends with one of the best written and delivered monologues in film history. As the barber has taken Hynkel’s place behind the microphone he realizes the opportunity he has been given to speak to the world and seizes it.
The Great Dictator stars Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Carter DeHaven, Henry Daniell and Reginald Gardiner. Directed by Charlie Chaplin.
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The cartoon is Porky Pig in Confusions Of A Nutzy Spy from 1943. A Looney Tunes, Warner Bros film produced by Leon Schlesinger.