MOVIE · 1940

The Great Dictator

ComedyDramaWar125 min

Charles Chaplin is both Adenoid Hynkel, the blustering dictator of Tomainia, and a Jewish barber whose life is upended by Hynkel’s campaign of persecution. As the ruler pushes to expand his empire, the barber returns to a ghetto under siege and is drawn into a mix of slapstick confusion, political satire, and mistaken identity. Paulette Goddard’s Hannah brings grit to the barber’s corner of the neighborhood, while Jack Oakie turns a rival despot into one more figure in Chaplin’s mockery of fascist vanity. Chaplin folds broad comedy into an openly anti-war attack on tyranny.