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Customer Reviews of The Great Dictator - Chaplin Collection (Limited Edition Collector's Set)

The Great Dictator has never been one of my favourite Chaplin films, probably because it's so dependent on its own specific timeframe. Many details in this film do hinder its effect: Chaplin's very theatrical dialogue delivery, complete with a British accent which jars mightily with the German and Jewish characters he's playing, especially when mixed with the hilarious "faux German" he employs for the role of Adenoid Hynkel; the corny music, which verges on the melodramatic and sounds syrupy especially during dramatic climaxes; the wandering central narrative; and the final speech, where overly florid writing and delivery make the central message sound less heartfelt than it could have been.

But perhaps director Sydney Lumet says it best: "[The final speech] was inartistic; I don't care. Nothing has to be perfect." And considering that Chaplin funded the film himself at enormous cost (559 days of production and post-production!) and took direct aim at Adolf Hitler, the film was still a massive achievement, a testament to the fearlessness of art and artists. And proof positive that such fearlessness is often rewarded, given the film's tremendous box-office success. Let that be a lesson to Hollywood.

The DVD extras are very good. The documentary "The Tramp and the Dictator", co-produced by both the BBC and Spiegel TV, sheds light on many aspects of the film's production and contextualizes Chaplin's life and filmmaking with the career of Adolf Hitler clearly and engagingly. It also features excellent narration by Kenneth Branagh. The colour footage shot by Sydney Chaplin is just priceless -- it's eye-opening to see the staging of the film in colour form, using different angles. There's also a scene that was cut from the earlier Chaplin short "Sunnyside" which may have informed the "Hungarian Dance No. 5" sequence in The Great Dictator.

Chaplin's crowning achievement!
One of the greatest satires ever filmed and Chaplin's most fully realized comedy. A beautiful blend of the usual Chaplin slapstick and pathos along with a very effective social and political commentary. Charlie is Adenoid Hynckle, dictator of an only slightly fictional country of Tomania. He also plays a Jewish ghetto barber. Both are played with such impeccable accuracy that to distinguish between them is extremely easy.Names are changed but this film is still the most effective film of Nazi Germany and Hitler's thankfully aborted attempt to take over the world. Chaplin's script never gets too preachy at least without an equal dose of satire. His approach is to make people laugh while teaching them at the same time. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his final monologue. After a predictable mistaken identity episode, Chaplin as the unnamed Jewish barber speaks of the horrors of Nazism. This climazes what may be the greatest performance in the history of comedy films. The greatest because it does more than simply make us laugh-it makes us think. The film earned Chaplin well deserved Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Screenplay and Actor. This is a film you must see.

Serio-comic masterpiece---Hitler saw this one twice!
This film is an excellent piece of anti-axis propaganda in the guise of a hilarious satire of totalitarianism. Chaplin portays two characters who's resemblance to one another is merely coincidental. One is a Adenoid Hynkel, dictator of Tomania with a jewish name, the other a Jewish barber with impeccable instincts for sussing out trouble. Overall, "The Great Dictator" attempts to demonstrate the idiocy of war. By turning the key players into buffoons, it portays the war machine as a circus. This film is much more than a lampoon of the Nazis, however. The silliest characature of all is of Benito Mussolini. Jack Oakie's portrayal of the Dictator of Bacteria, Benzino Napaloni, is the highlight of the film. He's like a stereotype of one of those "larger-than-life" tourists who bluster with absolute authority wherever he goes. It is really hard not to picture him in the loudest hawaiian shirt know to man. It is really obscenely funny. The interaction between the two dictators provides the most sustained lunacy in the film. Their attempts to one-up one another are just brilliant.

"The Great Dictator" does have an extremely serious side. There is an attempt to portray the plight of the displaced Jews with care and much pathos. It works, more or less. The Jewish Ghetto is given enough attention that the viewer develops a connection with them as they attempt to get on with their lives. Maurice Moscovitch as Mr. Jaeckel is particularly effective. Paulette Goddard plays Hannah as a rather dim, dreamy stumblebum. She's cute, but occasionally annoying. Sometimes, it feels like Chaplin has transported Hannah back to the Wizard of Oz--she speaks in that same half-whimpering, dreamy manner as Judy Garland's Dorothy.

Finally, this film certainly transcends any single political agenda. The only agenda one can associate with it is the aim to bring laughter to a world torn asunder by the vagaries of milatary posturings. It seems telling (to me, at least), that Adolf Hitler viewed this film twice. I have always been curious as to what his thoughts were on this total classic send-up of the great men of the Blood-Axis in their own time. Perhaps by the end of the first viewing, he perceived that Mussolini got the worst of it. Then he watched it again--this time with pleasure. If you can't laugh at yourself...