Review of The Great Dictator (1940) by Geraint O — 12 Jun 2008

The film is not Chaplin at his best as an actor. Chaplin was by this time an artisan of an obsolete craft, the film was in that way as dated in 1940 as it was in 1990, the talkie had taken root and Chaplin was a "movie" actor, not a "talkie" actor.

This film also dated in it's depiction of the Concentration Camp, the true horrors of the "Final Solution" were still a few years away, Speielberg in Schindler's list had the luxury of hindsight.

(Was Spielberg's use of obsolete black and white in that film a homage?) Chaplin did however understand, and did communicate, Hitler's pathological antisemitism- which at that time was not as well understood as it should have been.

This film played it's part in reminding Americans that there was a the bad guys side and a good guys side in World War II, which at that time they were sitting out, so this film did an important job.

However for me this film gets it's four and half of it's five stars from me for that great monologue at the end, a great political speech.