12 Movies In The IMDB Top 250 You've Probably Never Seen
2. The Great Dictator
There isn't anybody working in Hollywood today quite like Charlie Chaplin, and there arguably never has been.
The man was willing to put his own reputation on the line for the sake of art - his first true sound film, The Great Dictator, is a political satire, poking fun at and denouncing the likes of Hitler, Mussolini and the Nazis in general - which was obviously a risky movie, given that the film was released in the midst of World War II.
And nobody would be ballsy enough to make a film like this today, release it, and continue to publicly support it. Society today is consistently on edge, with the tiniest, most insignificant of trivialities setting people off.
But satire and free speech are both important. The last example of a major movie poking fun at a dictator was 2014's The Interview, but the studio did not have the confidence to release the film after receiving threats of violence.
Were they wrong to pull it? Some would say no, but Chaplin would probably say yes - for reasons The Great Dictator illustrates.
In a period of wartime hardship, the film brought people together to have fun. Satire can put political pressure on those it makes fun of, while almost empowering the audiences laughing at them.
The Great Dictator is funny, and important. It's a little harder to watch today than it would've been in the 40s due to the type of comedy we're used to nowadays, but as cinema's first notable satire, it's valuable viewing.