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The Great Dictator

Chaplin plays a double role in this controversial satire: that of a Jewish barber and that of the xenophobic dictator Hynkel.

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Deze voorstelling maakt deel uit van Rialto Filmclub met als gastspreker deze maand Ernst-Jan Pfauth.

The Great Dictator

After twenty years, a Jewish barber returns home only to find his dilapidated barber shop covered in hateful graffiti: the work of a tyrannical regime led by xenophobic dictator Hynkel.

The Great Dictator is a visionary satire that has left its mark on history. Chaplin himself plays two roles in this film: one is a Jewish barber and the other one the dictator. It is the first film in which Chaplin audibly speaks. Although he had begun filming in the late 1930s, the film was not released until 1940. Initially, it was not well received in the US, with the government at the time even speaking of an attack on "a head of state of a friendly nation".