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| Charles
Chaplin, Jack Oakie, Paulette Goddard, Reginald Gardiner,
Henry Daniell, Billy Gilbert |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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A Jewish Barber (Charles Chaplin):
I'm sorry but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business.
I don't
want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone
if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white. We all want to help
one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each
others' happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to
hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone.
And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone
In Chaplin's satire on Nazi Germany,
dictator Adenoid Hynkel has a double... a poor Jewish barber...
who one day is mistaken for Hynkel.
 Few
films are more difficult to view outside of their historical context
than Chaplin's The Great Dictator, the legendary attack
on Hitler by the world's most beloved comedian. Chaplin himself
has gone on the record stating that he wouldn't have made it had
the extent of the Nazi regime's crime been known at the time. Indeed,
with the benefit of hindsight, Chaplin's well-intentioned and often
hilarious attempt to reduce the twentieth century's most brutal
dictator
to a vain,
insecure
and buffoonish fool does seem misguided. But in a time when the
entire Western world was desperate to appease Hitler's aggressive
regime, Chaplin's dedication to making a symbolic stand had an
impact beyond measure.
Among the high points in this uneven but hugely impressive production
are Chaplin's legendary mock-German gibberish in parody of Hitler's
speeches; the famous dance with the globe-shaped balloon; the Jewish
Barber shaving a customer in time with the music on the radio;
and every scene in which notorious scene-stealer Jack Oakie does
his hilarious send-up of Mussolini. Low points are the film's opening
sequence, getting the film off to an awkward start that has little
bearing on the rest of the film; Paulette Goddard's lack of skill
as a performer of dialogues; the meandering plot, that includes
several good jokes but has little momentum or cohesion; and the
notoriously mawkish final speech, clearly well-intentioned but
off-putting and dramatically ineffective. As a film, it may be
something of a mixed bag that doesn't compare well with Chaplin's
silent classics. But The Great Dictator's scale, ambition,
and sheer nerve puts it into a class of its own as a unique work
unparallelled in cinema history. |
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A Region 1 DVD was originally
released by Image, with mediocre image quality. More recently,
the
international distribution rights for Chaplin's feature films
have moved to the Paris-based MK2, which is releasing double-disc
DVD editions of his major work in collaboration with Warner.
The versions being released for Region 1 and 2 have identical
contents, but the Region 1 versions suffer from video errors
resulting from poor PAL-to-NTSC conversion. The Region 2
double-disc set from Warner/MK2 served as the basis for
this release.
The fullscreen
image is framed at its original aspect ratio of approx. 1.33:1. The
image has been meticulously restored, offering a clean, high-contrast
transfer that's impressive throughout. There is hardly any
print damage, and blacks are deep and solid. (NOTE: The films
in Warner/MK2's new Chaplin Collection were transferred from
the restored high-definition masters to PAL video. For the
Region 1 release of these DVDs, the PAL transfers were converted
to NTSC, resulting in many instances of ghosting, aliasing
and other conversion flaws. The Region 2 release therefore
boasts superior image quality to the American version. Read
this article for more information on the
PAL-NTSC issue.)
Both the original mono soundtrack and a new Dolby
Digital 5.1 remix are included on this release. Both
tracks have their advantages and their drawbacks: the mono
track, emanating from both front speakers, sounds a little
less pronounced, but is uncluttered by hiss or pops in the
track. The 5.1 remix has better clarity due to some excellent
separation of the dialogues from the music and sound effects,
but its full use of the surround field can be a little forced
and somewhat off-putting: the explosions during the opening
wartime sequence are spread across a 360¾ sound field similar
to that of a contemporary action picture, while the lack
of fidelity undermines the intended sense of immersion.
Throughout the film, voices and sound effects pop up rather
startlingly from the left, right and rear channels, providing
a well-mixed but rather incongruous listening experience.
Easily the most compelling
extra to appear as part of this two-disc set is the hour-long documentary The
Tramp and the Dictator. Produced in 2001, this excellent
item offers an in-depth examination of the parallels and
contrasts between the careers of Chaplin and Hitler, born
within days
of each
other, along with a thorough look at the making of the film.
It includes unique color footage of the shooting of several
scenes, showing Chaplin at work on his elaborate sets. This
recently discovered unique silent footage is reproduced in
its entirety as a separate item titled 'Making Of in Color
by Sydney Chaplin', more for its historical worth than for
its entertainment value.
A deleted scene from Chaplin's 1919 short Sunnyside shows
how Chaplin first developed the character of the barber that
he would revisit in The Great Dictator. An oddly
superfluous inclusion here is a brief scene from Chaplin's
later film Monsieur Verdoux, only relevant to this
release for its inclusion of newsreel footage of Hitler and
Mussolini. Of far more interest is the extensive collection
of international movie posters spanning
various re-releases of the film across several decades. A
succession of two stills from the film leads into the main static
menu screen, as with the other titles in the Chaplin Collection.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed:
September 25, 2003
Click
here for IMDB info on The
Great Dictator.
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to return to the front page.
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