The Great Dictator  1939   1941   next   previous

The Great Dictator Clippings 182/369

New York Times, New York, October 20, 1940.

The Great Dictator Program, Oct. 15, 1940,

Discovering Chaplin

& Capitol Theatre, exterior by day, marquee „B‘way Melody“

Robert Taylor, Eleanor Powell, New York

(...) The Vault, Boxoffice Magazine, Oct. 16, 1937

& Capitol Theatre, auditorium before the 1959

renovation, New York

& Speaking of In „Which We Serve“ – that picture is

hanging up an all-time staying record at the Capitol, just behind

„Gone With the Wind“ and „The Great Dictator.“

(...) Motion Picture Daily, Feb. 5, 1943

& United Artists Corporation (...)

      October 17, 1940

      Dear Mr. Quigley.

      Could I please convey to you my personal thanks for

the fine coverage Motion Picture Daily gave the opening of „The

Great Dictator.“

      It‘s an excellent example of journalistic enterprise

and thoroughness and we, all of us at United Artists, are very

pleased and grateful.

      Sincerely,

      Charles Chaplin

(...) Letter, Motion Picture Daily, Oct. 21, 1940

„The exceedingly bitter laugh of the high gods“

Editorial content. „THE STRONG CAN LAUGH

      Charles Chaplin, as he now prefers to be called, has run

up against a deeply disturbing question in his

belated offering of The Great Dictator. Every critic,

perhaps every member of the audiences,

has felt an uneasiness behind the laughter in this film.

The pretensions of dictators could be a joke

as late as two years ago. Are they now? Is Nazi-occupied

France funny? Is martyred London funny?

Can the man or men who caused these horrors

be considered comic?“ (...)

      „Is Hitler, in his infinite puffing up of an infinitesimal soul,

Hitler the neurotic, the warped, to be valued according

to the vast damage he can do? Is there less irony than there

was two years ago in the spectacle of such a human

being setting up to be a god? Are his posturings the saner

because millions of German men and women have

gone mad with him?“ (...)

      „Men can face death with laughter on their lips.

Exultant laughter can ring out when the

pretensions of imperial clowns are at last deflated. And if you

listen carefully and reverently, in faith and charity

and valor, you may perhaps hear, even now, foretelling

the doom of humorless barbarism, the exceedingly

bitter laugh of the high gods.“    

     The Great Dictator world premiere is in New York Oct. 15, 1940

      at the Capitol and Astor Theatres.

      Capitol Theatre, 1645 Broadway (at 51st Street), New York. 

      Astor Theatre, 1531 Broadway (at 45th Street), New York.

Redaktioneller Inhalt

 The Great Dictator  1939   1941   next   previous