Back at the dawn of the talkie era, Charlie Chaplin defended his decision not to start making sound films by saying "The moment the little tramp talks, he's dead". He was right of course. His comic persona was the creation of an era in cinema when words and voices were irrelevant. The little tramp's appeal lay entirely in how he did things, not in what he was supposed to be saying. And yet it was inevitable that if Chaplin wanted to continue in the business he would have to cave in eventually. Besides Chaplin's agenda was itself changing, and he had now reached a point in his life where he really wanted to speak to the world.

Many of the early scenes in The Great Dictator seem to prove Chaplin's fears about sound film. The slapstick has lost its flow, looking forced and awkward. And it appears Chaplin has no real idea how to write or direct dialogue. Sometimes characters make some banal little comment on the action as if simply to fill up the silence. Even worse things happen when Chaplin attempts verbal humour, resorting to feeble puns like the one about the gas keeping him awake all night (not that puns are necessarily bad, just that Chaplin isn't very good at them). Above all, the visual and verbal business is poorly integrated, with a badly-timed stop-start feel. It makes it particularly jarring after a dialogue scene to see this ageing version of the little tramp doing some of his old moves, such as teetering on one foot as he runs into a squad of stormtroopers. These scenes are unlikely to raise more than a titter, and are a sad testament to the fact that this familiar character was past his prime and out of time.

But this is a tale of two Charlies. For the first time in decades Chaplin creates a new character for himself in dictator Adenoid Hynkel. And the great thing about Hynkel is that he sidesteps Chaplin's inability with comedy in words but still makes use of comedy in sound. The dictator's cod-Germanic speech is part silly-voice, part linguistic nonsense and it is very, very funny. It actually adds to the humour that no-one else in the picture speaks it, and that Hynkel mostly lapses into it in moments of anger, as if it was some involuntary anxiety-driven affectation. The other great thing about Hynkel is that he is one of Chaplin's great works of satire. The nonsense language is of course a lampooning of Hitler's forceful speechmaking, but the parody continues through everything Hynkel does. Take for example when he has finished posing with the baby, and rather disgustedly wipes his hand clean. He does it with the same stiff-faced disdain that Hitler always displayed in public, but the character's puffed-up austerity is also being punctured by the fact that he's just got his hand covered in wee wee. The little tramp, a creation of and for the silent era, could not make the transition to sound. But Hynkel is a creation of and for the sound era, and he works fantastically.

As the picture unfolds, it begins to gain maturity and clarity, not to mention comic brilliance. Jack Oakie's Napoloni makes a perfect partner for Hynkel, and their antics together are like the Marx Brothers at their most riotous. Napoloni is also a work of satire equal to Hynkel, with Oakie working in many of Mussolini's less dignified mannerisms, such as curling his lip and bulging his eyes like he's trying to squeeze out a fart. While Chaplin's direction is at its most overt and showy, he also cleverly and subtly gears his compositions towards ridicule, making the most of those tall set designs to show off the dictator as some little twerp. And finally, the picture acquires the poignancy that made Chaplin's silent features stand out, this time with an extra bite in the seriousness of its message. It is then that you realise Chaplin knew his little tramp was finished, and yet that he needed him here to deliver his point. By subjecting him to sound, Chaplin sacrifices his alter-ego, making a means to speak his mind to the public who had loved him.

This ingenious and innovate comedy packs many priceless moments and great sense of pace , though overlong . Chaplin's satire with several classic scenes , he has dual role as a Jewish barber and dictator Hynkel , an offensive portrayal of Hitler . Then the barber is mistaken for the Hitlerian tyrant and there happens bemusing events . Funny and extraordinary acting all around , as the stunning co-stars Jack Oakie as Napolini (Mussolini-alike) , Henry Daniel as Gasbstich (Himmler-alike) and Billy Gilbert as Herring (Goering) . Chaplin's first spoken film is brilliantly photographed by Karl Struss . This splendid film contains numerous amusing scenes , the funniest are the followings : 1) The one when during the WWI the barber-soldier along with a co-pilot are flying in a turned plane without to be aware 2) When Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tells overacting speeches , including a twisted microphone 3) Hynkel playing with an enormous world balloon 4) The Jew-barber shaving a man while fitting to Hungarian Dance : number 5 by Brahms 5) when Hynkel and Napolini each try to keep his body higher than other in a barber's chair , among them .

Production on the movie started in 1937 and shot in 539 days when not nearly as many people believed Nazism was a menace , as was the case when it was released in 1940 ; however , this film was ultimately upstaged as the first anti-Nazi film satire . Hitler banned movie exhibition to the Germans due to its satire of him , and put him in his death list after his proposed conquest of America . The movie is co-starred by Paulette Goddard , third of his four wives , they were married in 1936 , although no announcement of the marriage was made later, one time finished The Great Dictator . The picture was released in 1940 , when Chaplin had survived a moral scandal by a paternity suit but a brush with the House of Un-American Activities was the signal for the USA to refuse him re-entry from Britain and he fled to Switzerland . This movie was Charles Chaplin's biggest-ever box-office hit , grossing about $5 million at the time.

Charlie Chaplin's boldest film for its willingness to take on Adolf Hitler before nearly anyone else, "The Great Dictator" was also Chaplin taking on sound 11 years after everyone else. If it had to be the end of cinema's greatest Silent Clown, he did what he could to take down history's greatest monster in the process.

There are two reasons to like "The Great Dictator." One is that Chaplin was on the side of the angels, at no small risk given his target's ambitions. The other is he didn't forget to make it funny.

Essentially a Prince And The Pauper remake, "Dictator" presents Chaplin as both Adenoid Hynkel, the cruel if inept "Phooey" (a. k. a. "Führer") of Tomainia, and a Jewish World War I veteran, poignantly left unnamed as a nod to the Common Man, who only wants to work in peace at his barber shop. While Hynkel struggles with his two great passions, hating Jews and loving war, the barber finds love and a cause to believe in.

The comedy here can be categorized into the great and the good, with most of the former featuring Chaplin as Hynkel. He's simply much funnier here as the bad guy, whether playing it broad (jumping secretaries, delivering speeches in hate-choked gobbledegook) or subtle (after shooting dead a man who claims to have "perfected" a bullet-proof suit, Hynkel simply turns and walks away with a three-word critique: "Far from perfect.")

Hynkel is a character who solves Chaplin's legendary problem with sound, whether dressing down his blubbering subordinate Herring (Billy Gilbert) or struggling to keep his composure when fellow dictator Napaloni (Jack Oakie) rebuffs his attempts at intimidation. Told by his right-hand man Garbitsch (Henry Daniell) that the people are objecting to sawdust in the bread, he huffs: "What more do they want? It's from the finest lumber our mills can supply!"

The comedy around the barber gets more labored. Maybe it's because much of it turns on the oppression of the Jews, though Chaplin here is trying to establish them as underdogs and rooting interest. It's here the film becomes tricky, not because he is mocking the unmockable but because the characters we meet, including the Barber, are fairly bland and the humor patchy. There is some very funny material here, but excessive bits too where people get klonked with pans or splattered with whitewash. At least Chaplin avoided setting a pie fight in a starving ghetto.

The famous last scene is a great divider for many; in it Chaplin steps out of character to address us the audience about...what? The world needs more love and less hate, I guess. It's a philosophically strangled message, both anti-fascist and oddly pacifistic at a time when Hitler's legions were swallowing Europe, with Chaplin warning of "machine men with machine minds" as if he was still making "Modern Times" and punching the sky at times for lame effect.

To me it's a crass way to end a good comedy, if perhaps necessary given the stakes involved. Hitler was real, and calling him out for what he was had real value in terms of rallying those called upon to defeat him. If it doesn't transcend time as well as it could, "The Great Dictator" is still a fine comedy that delivers strong laughs and stronger historical resonances.