January 31st, 2019 | Updated on February 19th, 2022
Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel’s regime.
20 years after the end of WWI, in which the nation of Tomainia was on the losing side, Adenoid Hynkel has risen to power as the ruthless dictator of the country. He believes in a pure Aryan state and the decimation of the Jews.
This situation is unknown to a simple Jewish Tomainian barber who has been hospitalized since a WWI battle.
Upon his release the barber, who had been suffering from memory loss about the war, is shown the new persecuted life of the Jews by many living in the Jewish ghetto, including a washerwoman named Hannah with whom he begins a relationship.
The barber is ultimately spared such persecution by Commander Schultz, whom he saved in that WWI battle.
The lives of all Jews in Tomainia are eventually spared with a policy shift by Hynkel himself, who is doing so for ulterior motives.
But those motives include a desire for world domination, starting with the invasion of neighboring Osterlich, which may be threatened by Benzino Napaloni, the dictator of neighboring Bacteria.
Ultimately Schultz, who has turned traitor against Hynkel’s regime, and the barber may be able to join forces to take control of the situation, using Schultz’s inside knowledge of the regime’s workings and the barber’s uncanny resemblance to one of those in power.
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Movie Reviews: “The Great Dictator“
Movie Review: Time Magazine
The Great Dictator (United Artists) is the story of a little, persecuted Jewish barber (Charlie Chaplin) living in a state ruled by a nasty dictator (also Charlie Chaplin) and how the two finally find their roles reversed. Mr. Chaplin put into it four infallible ingredients:
Slapstick he provided liberally—Chaplin the soldier of World War I firing an anti-aircraft gun in all heavenly and earthly directions; Chaplin the dictator who takes a huge mouthful of English mustard; Jack Oakie, the rival dictator, mugging and talking tough.
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Movie Review: Chicago Reader
Made in 1940, when a sense of humor about the Nazis was still possible. Charles Chaplin plays two roles, Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator of Tomania, and a poor Jewish barber who’s mistaken for Hynkel and sent to deliver a speech in his place. The final address, in which Chaplin pleads with the audience for sanity and world peace, has often been criticized for its length and sententiousness, but it 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. With Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, and Henry Daniell.
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Movie Review: Cinema-stache
The days after Trump’s election prompted a serious discussion about the role of comedy in our civic discourse. Can one laugh about a functionally insane con artist in the White House? Thankfully, consensus rapidly settled around the obvious position: far from making light of a grim situation, humor serves as a potent weapon to denude, irritate and perhaps even help unseat our manifestly unfit “leader.” Social media outlets like Twitter – Trump’s weapon of choice against his enemies – have proven equally adept at delivering potent zingers in the other direction.
Ordinary people take their shots at him every day, alongside more notable figures from political opponents to celebrities. That comes on top of a host of traditional forms of satire… topped, perhaps, by Melissa McCarthy’s merciless SNL takedown of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
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