Cinema
The Great Dictator
Charlie Chaplin · 1940
Synopsis
1918. A Tomanian soldier, a Jewish barber, saves the aviator Schultz; their plane crashes and he loses his memory. He spends twenty years in hospital. When he leaves, Adenoid Hynkel has taken power and is persecuting the Jews; the barber reopens his shop in the ghetto as if nothing had changed and stands up to the militiamen who are painting an insult on his window. His neighbour Hannah knocks them out with a frying pan. Hynkel, for his part, prepares to invade a neighbouring country and receives Napaloni, dictator of Bacteria.
Context
The screenplay was completed in the autumn of 1938, the year of the annexation of Austria, and filming began on 9 September 1939, six days after the declaration of war by France and the United Kingdom. Chaplin financed it himself; the company he had co-founded put pressure against the film, and President Roosevelt, on the contrary, supported the project. Chaplin was born four days apart from the head of state he plays. In his memoirs, he wrote that he would not have made this film had he known what the camps were.
Who it is for
A film of two hours five minutes, its author's first fully talking film, who had long remained faithful to silent cinema.
Prizes and reception
Five Oscar nominations, without a win, and the greatest commercial success of its author.
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