In his controversial masterpiece The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin, in his first pure talkie, brings his sublime physicality to two roles: the cruel yet clownish “Tomainian” dictator and the kindly Jewish barber who is mistaken for him. Featuring Jack Oakie and Paulette Goddard in stellar supporting turns, The Great Dictator, boldly going after the fascist leader before the U.S.’s official entry into World War II, is an audacious amalgam of politics and slapstick that culminates in Chaplin’s famously impassioned speech.

“The final address […] is a remarkable piece of acting and verbal rhetoric (all the more so as this was the first time Chaplin had spoken in a film). Chaplin is at his most profound in suggesting that there is much of the Tramp in the Dictator, and much of the Dictator in the Tramp.”
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

“Stands as a radical nonpareil, a film that had to be made…The result is an unrepeatable explosion of doublings—the most renowned entertainer in the world laying his own persona down on the railroad tracks of fascist mania…Like all major Chaplin works, DICTATOR was a cheaply, but methodically, made film, a cardboard act of humanist defiance, and, thanks to its purity of purpose, the cheesier the jokes get (famously, the German language itself receives a phlegmatic hosing), the harder they land. Reportedly, Hitler banned it, then watched it alone—twice.”
– Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice

“Chaplin’s most serious, most tragic, most human work…There are also immortal moments of Chaplin pantomime.”
– Roger Ebert

“The ‘silent’ comedy of THE GREAT DICTATOR remains wicked and subversive…There are comic set pieces—most notably the balloon ballet and the stuff with Oakie—that deserve to be in an anthology on Chaplin’s genius…THE GREAT DICTATOR is Chaplin’s bravest moment.”
– David Thomson