The Great Dictator [he] was terrified, not knowing what to expect next." The Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in Beverly Hills, California, has a copy of "The Great Dictator" script. The library permits viewers of the script to read it and take notes, but prohibits photocopying of it. In 1997, "The Great Dictator" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". In 2000, the American Film Institute ranked the film No. 37 in its "100 Years... 100 Laughs" list. The film
Dictator novel historical dictators. The genre of the dictator novel has been very influential in the development of a Latin American literary tradition, because many of the novelists rejected traditional, linear story-telling techniques, and developed narrative styles that blurred the distinctions between reader, narrator, plot, characters, and story. In examining the authority of leadership, the novelists also assessed their own social roles as paternalistic dispensers of wisdom, like that of the "caudillo" whose régime they challenged in their dictator novels. Literary critic Roberto González Echevarría argues that the dictator novel is “the most clearly indigenous thematic tradition in Latin American literature”, and