The Great Dictator

Charlie Chaplin’s first “talkie”. A satiric attack on Hitler and Nazism, telling the story of an amnesiac Jewish barber (based on Chaplin’s “tramp”), who happens to resemble Hitler. Chaplin plays both the barber, and the role of “Adenoid Hynkel”, the tyrannical dictator of “Tomania”. The Jewish barber, who lost his memory while serving in the First World War, was subsequently hospitalized for twenty years. When he tries to return to his barbershop upon his release, he finds that it is inside the Jewish ghetto, controlled by SA thugs. Although The Great Dictator was made when the world did not yet know the whole truth about Nazism, it attempted to expose the absurdity of Fascism and its antisemitic policies by presenting Hitler as a ridiculous clown.