The Great Dictator
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Great Dictator is a film directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin. First released in October, 1940, it bitterly satirizes Nazism and Adolf Hitler, culminating in an overt political plea to defy fascism.
The film is exceptional in its period, in the days prior to American entry into World War II, as the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany. Well before the full extent of the horrors of Nazism had been uncovered, Chaplin's film advanced a stirring, controversial condemnation of Hitler, fascism, and the Nazis, the latter of whom he excoriates in the film as "machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts".[1]
The film was Chaplin's first "talkie", and his most commercially successful film.
