We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940)
331
The two most important cinematic events of 1940 were both revolutionary in their respective ways. The first was Charlie Chaplin's long-awaited picture, The Great Dictator. Here, for the first time in his career, he played a speaking part. His enunciation was perfect, and his voice was pleasant in quality and, when the occasion demanded it, powerful. The great pantomimist was an accomplished speaking actor as well. Some of his best speeches, however, were delivered not in English, but in the grotesque, quasi-Teutonic jargon that was the native tongue of flynkel, the Great Dictator of the mythical country of Tomania. Jack Oakie, as Napaloni, dictator of the neighboring country of Bacteria, shared comedy honors with Chaplin. He is shown here, to the left of Hynkel. The others in the front row are: (extreme left) Carter De Haven as an ambassador, (right of
Chaplin) Billy Gilbert as Herring, and Henry Daniell as Garbitsch. Second from the left in the back row is Reginald Gardiner as Schultz.
BELOW
Chaplin played the dual role of a little Jewish barber who is the dictator's double and the dictator himself. Here he is, in the former role, being arrested by the Tomanian equivalent of the Gestapo, with Paulette Goddard, as Hannah, in the doorway. The picture's appeal was undoubtedly injured by the fact that it was begun in 1938, before the war, and was released in 1940, when Adolf Hitler, the thinly disguised original of Hynkel, was no laughing matter. Many of the individual sequences in the picture were, nevertheless, worthy to rank among Chaplin's happiest inspirations. Chaplin, as usual, produced, wrote, and directed the film.