Something went wrong
Try again later.
Charlie Chaplin The Great Dictator
Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber who accidentally looks very similar to the dictator recklessly joins a beautiful girl and her neighbors in rebelling.
26 February 1874, Cheshire, England, UK
26 February 1905, Chelsea, Massachusetts, USA
9 January 1886, Russia
December 25, 1886 in New York City, New York, USA
3 January 1890, New York City, New York, USA
2 January 1903, Pennsylvania, USA
23 December 1904, New York City, New York, USA
October 5, 1892 in London, England, UK
December 30, 1917 in Fallbrook, California, USA
18 February 1867, Halle an der Saale, Province of Saxony, Prussia [now Saxony-Anhalt, Germany]
3 June 1910, Whitestone Landing, Long Island, New York, USA
13 May 1891, Brooklyn, New York, USA
22 November 1897, London, England, UK
19 November 1902, Dallas, Texas, USA
8 March 1897, Washington, District of Columbia, USA
October 21, 1895 in Paris, France
28 January 1906, Cumberland, Maryland, USA
15 April 1917, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
6 June 1894, Ireland
31 March 1896, Brooklyn [now in New York City], New York, USA
5 February 1904, Bixby, Oklahoma, USA
April 24, 1899 in Monroe, Louisiana, USA
July 27, 1894 in Valencia, Spain
April 2, 1896 in Stuttgart, Germany
5 March 1894, London, England, UK
18 July 1894, New York, USA
5 October 1886, Chicago, Illinois, USA
12 September 1894, Louisville, Kentucky, USA
15 October 1897, Peoria, Illinois, USA
December 5, 1892 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA
May 30, 2011
While it is not the greatest of Charlie Chaplin's feature films, it is certainly his bravest, if not one of the bravest films ever made.
May 20, 2011
...stared evil in the face long before the rest of Hollywood even thought it was possible.
July 22, 2010
Despite the film's weaknesses, Chaplin's lampooning of Hitler is a moment of comic genius, complemented by Jack Oakie's ridiculously exaggerated portrayal of the Mussolini-like Italian fascist
January 18, 2013
The only trouble is that such perfect scenes as this are followed by more conventional passages which would be funny enough in an average picture but let one down in a film that deals so ambitiously with so great a theme.
December 23, 2009
Like all major Chaplin works, Dictator was a cheaply, but methodically, made film, a cardboard act of humanist defiance, and, thanks to its purity of purpose, the cheesier the jokes get, the harder they land.
April 04, 2017
The lessons remain, and the strength of his statement still inspires his descendants - professional or otherwise - to follow his example.
October 09, 2008
It's when he is playing the dictator that the comedian's voice raises the value of the comedy content of the picture to great heights.
September 03, 2010
Through no fault of Chaplin's, during the two years he was at work on the picture dictators became too sinister for comedy.
May 20, 2012
...a great movie because it works as a film, and because it is a document of courage and faith, the prime exhibit in Chaplin's humanist brief ... Dictator is a comedy, the work of a clown, but it is no joke. Chaplin had lethal intent.
September 03, 2010
Chaplin is at his most profound in suggesting that there is much of the Tramp in the Dictator, and much of the Dictator in the Tramp.
February 09, 2006
The representation of Hitler is vaudeville goonery all the way, but minus the acid wit and inventive energy that Groucho Marx managed.
June 01, 2011
The first full-blown talkie from the biggest star of the silent era, complete with a message that Chaplin couldn't have sent more loudly or clearly.

