A great last hurrah for The Tramp

Rating: 9/10 (31 March 2004)

For a lesser actor, the scariest fate is to be typecast. Even so, no actor so allowed himself to be typecast as Charles Chaplin. But this is the inimitable Charlie Chaplin; he did it to himself, and he endured the consequences -- artistic success that no other actor could ever achieve. The great Charlie did well.
Charles Chaplin succeeds as nobody else in the famous dual role as the Tramp, essentially the same character as he had been for over 25 years, and as "Adenoid Hynkel", also known as "Der Phooey" (spoof of Hitler's popular title "Der Fuhrer", undeniably a parody of Adolf Hitler, the evil dictator of "Ptomania", undoubtedly a spoof of (nazi) Germany (get it -- "ptomaine" is a very bad germ) and its dictator.
The classic Tramp of the pioneer days of motion pictures is this time a Jewish barber, a victim of the absurd persecution of an innocent people -- and he also looks like the hollow, silly "Adenoid Hynkel". As with other movies featuring the Tramp, one laughs with him as he endures the absurd situations of helpless humanity. We laugh at the Great Dictator for the harshness of his voice (Chaplin did not have an attractive voice), his rhetoric, his vanity, and his hypocrisy. The Tramp character is the common man in a nearly-hopeless situation; Adenoid Hynkel is a base man risen to power that he can never use except for the basest and most selfish, cruel purposes. The characters in their unique split roles meet in the most remarkable manner at the end of the movie, and to say more about that juxtaposition of characters is to introduce a spoiler. If you have never seen this movie, then see it at the first opportunity.
The superb physical comedy from the silent era survives without deterioration both as the Tramp and as the Great Dictator -- remarkable for his age (51) at the time, and for the fact that Chaplin did not age gracefully even if he lived into his late eighties. As usual Chaplin uses few words, illustrating his true ties to the silent era. For good reason Chaplin was slow to make a full adoption of his own voice in cinema -- but in its harshness it well fits the vile Adenoid Hynkel, a man who like his obvious model wins the predictable adulation of adoring crowds who have surrendered their freedom.
We laugh AT Adenoid Hynkel, a man who wistfully tosses a globe about disrespectfully, only to cause it to pop like a balloon; we see a microphone recoil from the harshness of his banal speech as a cowardly audience can't. But the unnamed Jewish tramp (and the other Jews)... we recognize a character that we can't do without -- the person who, however rational, can treat tragedy and despair with humor and innocence.
The movie ends with a cornball speech... corny now, but effective then, one in which the Tramp must pose as "Der Phooey" and use the misbegotten fame of a bad man -- against all of the evil that "Der Phooey" had wreaked upon the world.
See it, by all means.