The comments, for what they're worth, of one who has not seen Chaplin's silent films

Rating: 9/10 (7 August 1999)

Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler, for reasons best known to themselves, DID elect to wear the same paintbrush moustache, and it was only a matter of time before someone made use of this coincidence somehow. Luckily it was Chaplin himself.
Oddly enough, Chaplin plays a Jew who happens to have the same moustache as the Great Dictator, and it's only a matter of time before someone makes use of this coincidence somehow ...
The story gets put on hold every so often with comic set pieces that make it clear why Chaplin was so highly regarded. The penny-swallowing scene and the bit set to Brahms's fourth Hungarian Dance are hilarious and more than hilarious - agile and beautiful as well. (On the other hand, the globe scene, which I'm surprised to see people rave about, goes on forever.) Yet the story - or at any rate the basic situation - is still interesting enough to hold things together. The central character is the most reluctant of reluctant heroes. In a word, he's a coward. He HAS no hidden reserves of courage to draw upon when he needs them. But somehow he rises to the occasion anyway.
As a satire of Nazi Germany it's inevitably lacking, constrained in a hundred ways by the political conditions of, and lack of hindsight available in, the year in which it was made. The speech at the end is all very well but the content doesn't seem quite right today. (It would be more fittingly directed against Stalin than Hitler.) A partial misfire - but triumphantly great in places.