Wednesday 5/14 screening introduced by Chaplin scholar Dr. Charles Maland

Released a full year before the United States declared war on Nazi Germany, Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 satire of Adolf Hitler is among the gutsiest acts in Hollywood’s political history; incensed by Nazi Germany’s treatment of its Jewish citizens and reportedly cracked up by Hitler’s over-the-top presence in TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, Chaplin leveraged their famously shared mustache into a scathing comic meditation on the moral abyss of fascism. There’s technically no dead Nazis in this entry of our Dead Nazi Summer series, but none of the others can claim to have taken a direct shot at Hitler that reverberated around the world.

In his controversial masterpiece, Charlie Chaplin offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin, in his first pure talkie, brings his sublime physicality to two roles: the cruel yet clownish “Tomainian” dictator and the kindly Jewish barber who is mistaken for him. Featuring Jack Oakie and Paulette Goddard in stellar supporting turns, THE GREAT DICTATOR is an audacious amalgam of politics and slapstick that culminates in Chaplin’s famously impassioned speech. (Janus Films)

“Charlie Chaplin’s first talkie, made over a decade after the introduction of sound, stands as a brave and controversial piece of filmmaking.” – BBC

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