AWARDS & HONORS

The Great Dictator placed second on the National Board of Review's annual ten-best list. The Grapes of Wrath came in first. The National Board of Review also listed Charles Chaplin's among the year's best performances.

The film ranked ninth on The New York Times' ten best list, which was topped by The Grapes of Wrath

The New York Film Critics voted Charles Chaplin Best Actor of the year for The Great Dictator. Chaplin declined the award, claiming that he did not believe actors should compete and was distressed at the "electioneering" over the awards. Later commentators have suggested other reasons. Some say he was disappointed that his contributions as producer, director, writer and composer had been overlooked. Others pointed to his anger at some of the reviews, particularly their criticism of his climactic speech. One source even suggested he had only been voted Best Actor because the critics hoped his presence would be good publicity for the awards presentation. When he learned of their reasons, he was so offended he turned down the award. Whatever the reason, Chaplin remains the only winner ever to refuse the New York Film Critics Award.

The Great Dictator received five Oscar® nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Chaplin), Best Supporting Actor (Jack Oakie), Best Original Screenplay and Best Score. It lost Best Picture to Rebecca, Best Actor to James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story and Best Supporting Actor to Walter Brennan in The Westerner.

The Great Dictator was named to the National Film Registry in 1997.

THE CRITICS' CORNER

The Great Dictator made more than $5 million in international rentals, making it Charles Chaplin's highest-grossing film ever.

"The Great Dictator may not be the finest picture ever made, in fact, it possesses several disappointing shortcomings. But, despite them, it turns out to be a truly superb accomplishment by a truly great artist -- and, from one point of view, perhaps the most significant film ever produced." -- Bosley Crowther, The New York Times.

"It is when he is playing the dictator that the comedian's voice raises the value of the comedy content of the picture to great heights. He does various bits as a Hitler spouting at the mouth in which he engages in a lot of double talk in what amounts to a pig-Latin version of the German tongue, with grunts thrown in here and there, plus a classical 'Democracy shtoonk.' Chaplin is swell on the vocal horse-play with the German language." -- Char., Variety.

"...it is also tragic because a people is being persecuted; these Jews are straight characters, not the old cartoons; and the laughter chokes suddenly and is reluctant to start again. Chaplin likes to pull out all the stops on sentimental passages, but this thing is too near and meaningful. It isn't that a comedian should be denied indignation and kept clowning forever; it is that old thing in all art of the demands of unity, of a complete and sustained mood or tone. He was always a funny figure against the rude world, but the gulf between a kick in the pants and a pogrom is something even his talent for the humorous-pathetic will not cross. And his unrelieved six-minute exhortation to the downtrodden of the world, look up, stand up, etc., is not only a bad case of overwriting but dramatically and even inspirationally futile." -- Otis Ferguson, The New Republic.

"The Great Dictator is a frank, hard-hitting attack on Fascism, in which violent caricature bulks even larger than the immutable comedy of human existence that Chaplin knows so well." -- Howard Barnes, The New York Herald Tribune.

"I find it difficult to understand how after five years of Hitler terror (and in the year XV of Mussolini's regime) the sensitive creator of The Gold Rush [1925] and Modern Times [1936] could still have considered Fascists and Fascism as something just funny." -- Rudolf Arnheim, Films.

"Chaplin's satire on Hitler has a few funny moments, but the rest is heavy going, the production is cheeseparing, and the final speech to the world is a grave mistake." - Halliwell's Film & Video Guide.

"For this film he takes on more than a mimed representation of common humanity; he states, and accepts, the responsibility of being one of humanity's best and most widely-known representatives." - Basil Wright.

"You must go back to Intolerance [1916] for another motion picture that is so completely one man's personal expression of his attitude on something about which he feels deeply and passionately." - James Shelley Hamilton, National Board of Review.

"No time for comedy? Yes, I say, time for comedy. Time for Chaplin comedy. No time ever for Chaplin to preach as he does in those last six minutes, no matter how deeply he may feel what he wrote and says. He is not a good preacher. Indeed, he is frighteningly bad." - John O'Hara.

"The Great Dictator is an extraordinary mixture of comic mime, halting construction, and an embarrassing sermon at the end." - David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.

"The Great Dictator will provide you with an evening with Charlie Chaplin; an evening with pantomime by the master, an evening with a caricaturist whose psychological interpretation of Hitler is at times more frightening than amusing - an evening of comedy, satire, burlesque, fantasy, and tragedy, such as no other actor in the world could present." - Pare Lorentz, Lorentz on Film.

"The Great Dictator has aged, and that is wonderful. It has aged like a political editorial, like Zola's J'accuse, like a press conference. It is an admirable document, a rare piece, a useful object that has now become an art object...What is striking about The Great Dictator today...is Chaplin's desire to help his fellow men see more clearly...The Great Dictator is not only a defensive farce but also a very precise essay on the Jewish crisis and the mad racist program of Hitlerism - a little like Jean Renoir's La Marseillaise - in which two series of sketches alternate, Hitler's palace and the ghetto." - Francois Truffaut, The Films in My Life.

"Some great pantomime, but the final speech sounds pompous today." - Peter Cowie, Eighty Years of Cinema.

Compiled by Frank Miller & Jeff Stafford