20 Most Powerful Film Images Of All Time

13. "Hitler" Plays With The Globe - The Great Dictator

Charlie Chaplin's outrageous, ahead-of-its-time political satire saw the comic legend sending up Adolf Hitler by way of his creation Adenoid Hynkel, the tyrannical leader of the fictional nation of Tomania who bears a not-so-dissimilar resemblance to Hitler. The most iconic scene from the movie has Hynkel playing with a comically oversized balloon globe of the Earth, dancing and kicking it around. The image of Chaplin playfully spread on a table in full Hitler garb, balancing the globe on his hand, is a hilarious reminder of one key fact about life: nobody should be beyond mockery, not even a murderous lunatic of Hitler's variety, and the more we laugh at these figures, the less we legitimise their actions. More to point, it also suggests that, inside every maniac, there is a playful, little boy who once existed, even if he is now long gone. To take a figure so commonly associated with hate and turn him into a laughing stock was the bravest thing Chaplin ever did as a filmmaker, and it still blows us away almost three-quarters of a century later.