The Great Dictator (G)
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Caution: spoilers.

This came out in 1940, in the early days of World War II, before the United States joined the war. I didn't see it until 2025. I watched it on Presidents' Day, because our current president is trying to be a dictator. The movie is a satire, and I did find parts of it fairly amusing. But it also gives a small look at some of the problems with fascism, albeit not nearly as bad in the movie as it is in real life. (I feel like it's an understatement to say "problems" instead of "horrors", but the movie really doesn't delve deeply into just how horrific fascism can actually be. It's still pretty bad in the movie, though.)

It begins in 1918, during the first World War. A Jewish soldier (played by Charles Chaplin), who seems somewhat inept, goes through some difficulties, before saving the life of a pilot. The two of them fly off together in his plane, until it runs out of fuel and crashes. Both men survive, though the soldier develops amnesia. He spends the next twenty years in a hospital, before wandering off and returning to his barber shop in the Ghetto. He thinks he's only been away a few weeks, but the place is now covered in cobwebs. He cleans the shop up and goes back to work as a barber. Meanwhile, their country, Tomainia (a parody of Germany), has been turned into a dictatorship by Adenoid Hynkel (a parody of Adolf Hitler, also played by Chaplin). Stormtroopers harass the barber, though he doesn't understand why. He gets some help from his neighbor, Hannah, who wishes more people would stand up to the stormtroopers. When more of them show up and try to hang the barber, Commander Schultz stops them. It turns out he's the pilot whose life the barber had saved all those years ago, and he orders his men to leave the Jewish residents of the Ghetto alone. (How he seeming failed to recognize that the barber was almost identical to Hynkel is beyond me, but their similar appearance doesn't become an issue until the end of the movie.) Anyway, after meeting Schultz, the barber's memory of the war returns.

Hynkel wants to invade a country called Osterlich, but needs more money for his military. He wants to borrow it from a Jewish banker, who refuses. This enrages Hynkel, who had temporarily eased the treatment of Tomainia's Jews, but now orders his troops to purge the Jews. Schultz advises against this, which further angers Hynkel, who has Schultz sent to a concentration camp as a prisoner. But Schultz escapes and hides with the barber's neighbors, including an old Jewish man named Mr. Jaeckel. Schultz and the barber are eventually found by stormtroopers, and sent to a concentration camp. Hannah, Mr. Jaeckel, and some others flee to Osterlich. Meanwhile, Benzino Napaloni, the dictator of Bacteria (parodies of Benito Mussolini and Italy), is poised to invade Osterlich, which Hynkel wants to prevent, so that he can invade. They get together for negotiations, which don't go particularly well. But the Tomainians do finally invade Osterlich.

Schultz and the barber escape from the concentration camp and dress as stormtroopers, but the barber gets mistaken for Hynkel and is taken to a rally to deliver a speech. Meanwhile, Hynkel gets mistaken for the barber and is apparently taken to the concentration camp. I'm not sure why none of the stormtroopers recognized him as Hynkel, and I'm a bit disappointed that we never actually get to see what becomes of him. But the movie ends with the barber giving an impassioned speech about liberty and such. It really is a pretty great speech, though I was surprised it didn't cause anyone to realize he wasn't Hynkel. I kept expecting someone- such as Herring (the Minister of War), or more likely Garbitsch (the more serious Secretary of the Interior)- to shoot him, or something, but that didn't happen. I also thought it was a bit strange that the barber could make such an eloquent speech, when up til that point he had always spoken very little.

Anyway, as a comedy, I merely liked the movie. As a depiction of fascism, it was somewhat powerful, but still inadequate. The whole thing was pretty good, but mostly it wasn't quite good enough for me to love it. It really was the stirring speech at the end that made me love the movie, though that wouldn't have been enough by itself, if the rest of the movie hadn't been good, too. It all adds up to a truly great movie.