The Great Dictator

The twentieth century was home for a lot of events that have shaken not only America or Europe, but the whole world. It is seemed that throughout this period about 160 million people died, due to genocides and wars all around the globe. The first encounter with a world wide event, that affected a great deal of people, occurred in 1914 with the beginning of the First World War.

Although it affected a lot of countries it seems that not all the people (especially the Americans) were aware of all the things that were happening at a world level. They began to realize what the real situation was after watching different movies regarding this issue. This is way the film industry had and continues to have, even nowadays such a big impact.

An actor of that time, considered now one of the biggest and most famous actors of the early mid Hollywood cinema era was Charlie Chaplin. He is seen as one of the finest mimes and clowns ever captured on film and also as a notable filmmaker and composer. His most commercially successful film is “The Great Dictator”, a comedy that bitterly satirizes Nazism and Adolf Hitler. This film was released in the 1940 and is a bit courageous for its period, because we must remember that in that time this kind of films weren’t very common and it took a lot of nerves to make fun of the leader of a quite important European country. Also, we must applaud Chaplin for finding a way to condemn fascism, anti-Semitism and the Nazi with their leader Adolf Hitler.

Although the film had an unimaginable success Charlie Chaplin later stated in his

autobiography, that he would not have been able to make such jokes about the Nazi regime had the extent of the Nazi horrors been known before. It is unbelievable how he “predicted” in a way what was going to happen in the years that followed.

Adenoid Hynkel’s speeches foresaw Hitler’s claims for power and world dictatorship. He wants a world free of Jews, gypsies and brunets, full of pure, blue eyes blonds, of Aryans. A great influence over Hynkel has Garbitsch (Joseph Goebbels), his minister of interior, who seems to control a lot the attitude Hykel is suppose to have and also the whole Jewish situation.