Great Chaplin

Rating: 8/10 (7 January 2010)

The eerie resemblance between Chaplin's Little Tramp character and Hitler is used to good advantage in this satire. Chaplin waited until this 1940 film to make his first talkie and much of his dialog is gibberish! However, comedy is the universal language and there is much here that is quite amusing. One of the iconic scenes has Chaplin playing with a gas-filled globe, as he contemplates world domination. The scene goes on a bit too long, however, as does the film in general before concluding with an unnecessarily preachy speech. Despite some heavy-handedness, Chaplin is to be applauded for bringing attention to Hitler's atrocities before they became widely known.