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the little Jewish barber, an oddly foreshortened view of Charlie, and Hannah, the Jewish girl he befriends. The opposition of the dictator and the barber, which is the core of the film and its indictment of tyrants, is underlined by Chaplin's masterly use of speech. From the dictator pours a torrent, a spate, a flood of words, picked up and magnified by microphones and loudspeakers, denunciatory and hysterical, a prominent element in the caricature. The little barber scarcely speaks at all, and still expresses himself mainly through gesture, as Charlie always did. The two personalities are brilliantly presented in terms of speech; and this is the more remarkable when we realize that this is Chaplin's first talking film.
One other interesting point arising from the use Chaplin makes of speech in his first talkie, lies in the effect it has upon Charlie. Already, in appearing as the Jewish barber, antithesis of Hynkel, member of a persecuted people, Charlie has lost some of his transcendental quality, his universality. He loses more now that speech has come to him. Charlie expressed the whole of himself and of mankind in mime. Words impede and embarass him; and we feel, with a nostalgia keen as pain, that the Charlie we knew has gone from us.
A major part of the film is given to Charlie's recurrent yearning for the little home, the plot of land, roots in the earth, harbourage and rest, which first made its tentative appearance as early in the saga as 1915, in The Tramp; and which has reappeared, in one form or another, at intervals ever since, from A Dog's Life to City Lights, until in Modern Times it was nakedly presented as the simple aspiration of all men. Now, in The Great Dictator, this yearning is crystallized, illuminated and explained as part of the Jewish tragedy, the despairing cry of the persecuted race. The second part of the film is wholly dominated by this dream of the Promised Land, which, as so much else in Chaplin's work, is at once intensely personal to him; and a presentation of the age-old problem that has contemporary significance.
The end of the film was so unexpected that most reviewers, and some critics, were taken aback, and Chaplin was severely trounced for betraying the artistic unity and integrity of his work. The little Jewish barber, forced to impersonate Hynkel, is called upon to deliver one of the famous harangues. Without warning or preparation, Chaplin himself suddenly takes over. Satire, ridicule, comedy, pathos, the dualism and opposition of the main characters all forgotten, Chaplin the crusader speaks to mankind with burning sincerity, with absolute simplicity, with resolute rhetoric, taking as his large theme the brotherhood of man.* The screen is filled with the gigantic mask, not of
* See Appendix B.