THE GREAT DICTATOR

USA | 1940 | 35mm | 128 min.
Director: Charles Chaplin
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie

In one of the screen’s great lampoons of totalitarianism, Charlie Chaplin plays the twin roles of Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator of Tomania, and a poor Jewish barber who’s mistaken for Hynkel. Released only one year before America entered WWII, this is the first film in which Chaplin ever spoke and he makes the most of it, concluding his comic masterpiece with a heartfelt plea for sanity and world peace. Paulette Goddard co-stars in what is surely one of the most deeply personal films of its era.