The Great Dictator – This movie is brillaint, moving and amazing. Charlie Chaplin plays two key characters – Hynkel (who is quite clearly a take-off on Hitler) and a Jewish barber. It’s mind-blowing to imagine the daring it took to make a movie making fun of Hitler at such a difficult time, when the war was not yet over and the enormity of Hitler’s actions not yet fully realized.
And yet the movie has sequences that are among the funniest I have ever seen, particularly one in which Hynkel/Hitler does a dance with a large balloon representing the globe, bouncing and tossing it and playing with it but then crying when it ultimately pops.
I give it a 9.5.
ed: JH