The Great Dictator The Great Dictator The Great Dictator is a 1940 American political satire comedy-drama film written, directed, produced, scored by and starring British comedian Charlie Chaplin, following the tradition of many of his other films. Having been the only Hollywood filmmaker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, this was Chaplin's first true sound film. Chaplin's film advanced a stirring, controversial condemnation of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, fascism, antisemitism, and the Nazis. At the time of its first release, the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany. Chaplin plays both leading roles:
Dictator novel in 1845." In the 1970s, many dictator novels focused on the figure “of the aging dictator, prey to the boredom of a limitless power he is on the verge of losing.” Miguel Ángel Asturias's "El Señor Presidente" (written in 1933, but not published until 1946) is, in the opinion of critic Gerald Martin, "the first real dictator novel". Other literary treatments of the dictator figure followed, such as Jorge Zalamea's "El Gran Burundún Burundá ha muerto", but the genre did not gain impetus until it was reinvented in the political climate of the cold war, through the Latin American Boom.