Day 137: The Great Dictator (1940)

Movie #86 – The Great Dictator (1940) - 125 min, cert U.

Charlie Chaplin plays a jewish barber in the fictitious country of Tomania. The Dictator of Tomania, Adenoid Hynkel (Chaplin again), is oppressing the jewish population, but the barber leads his neighbourhood in a fightback against the military. Inevitably, the two doppelgangers get mistaken for each other.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by this movie. I was expecting more of the same slapstick drivel that was prevalent in Modern Times and City Lights, but there wasn’t actually that much of it. I hadn’t realised that this was a talkie, and was quite strange to hear Chaplin talking. I also hadn’t realised that Chaplin was English. Since his acting career took place exclusively in America, I just assumed he was American. But he has quite a well-spoken English accent. In fact, probably the funniest moment in the film (and, yes, it did have funny moments) was the speech Hynkel gives quite early on in a sort of mock-German. It makes me wonder why Chaplin was so reluctant to move into talkies when he was actually quite good at them.

Score – 6/10. Still not brilliant, but a good deal better than the others of his that I’ve seen.

Next up is Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. It’s a hard-hitting Vietnam film that doesn’t pull its punches. It’s been many years since I last saw it.