The Great Dictator was Chaplin’s first talking film, and he used it to mock tyranny at a time when few others dared to do so on screen.
The Great Dictator was released in 1940. Chaplin played two roles: a Jewish barber in the fictional country of Tomania, and Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator of Tomania, a figure clearly modelled on Adolf Hitler. The barber, who had lost his memory in the First World War, was mistaken for Hynkel, while Hynkel was mistaken for the barber, and the confusion drove the plot.
The film’s comedy was pointed. Hynkel played with a globe as if it were a balloon, danced with it, and watched it burst. His speeches, in a nonsense German-like language, mocked the sound and manner of dictatorship. Chaplin had long been aware that his moustache resembled Hitler’s, and he turned that resemblance into satire.
The film ended with the barber, mistaken for Hynkel, addressing a crowd and speaking in favour of humanity, tolerance and peace. The Great Dictator was a commercial success, and it remains remarkable because Chaplin made it before the United States entered the Second World War, when the danger of fascism was still being debated. It was the Tramp’s world, now with a voice, turned against a dictator.