The Great Dictator in 1945, it became the most popular film of the year, with admissions of 8,280,553. Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance concludes his lengthy examination of the film, in his book "Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema", by asserting the film's importance among the great film satires. Vance writes, "Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" survives as a masterful integration of comedy, politics and satire. It stands as Chaplin's most self-consciously political work and the cinema's first important satire." There is no critical consensus on the relationship between Chaplin's earlier Tramp character and the film's Jewish barber, but the trend is to view the barber
Roman dictator their office, although subject to the dictator's authority, and continued in office until the expiration of their year, by which time the dictator had typically resigned. It is uncertain whether a dictator's "imperium" could extend beyond that of the consul by whom he was nominated; Mommsen believed that his "imperium" would cease together with that of the nominating magistrate, but others have suggested that it could continue beyond the end of the civil year; and in fact there are several examples in which a dictator appears to have entered a new year without any consuls at all, although some scholars