Chaplin Talks! And Boy, Does He.

Rating: 8/10 (28 October 2011)

Gambling with the set-in-stone Chaplin character developed over decades was daring, and it could backfire any time. The film's climactic sermon, for instance, spills over of schmaltz. When a dictator's imposter nervously approaches the loudspeakers, then starts to talk, Chaplin himself is inexplicably bootlegged into the story. He condemns repression and eulogizing social equality, but it collapses the farce and ends the movie as a lecture, followed by swelling music. It's terminal when Chaplin suddenly retunes the movie's strings, which might've been his purpose for making it.
Chaplin speaks straight at us, in his own voice. No comic relief. Even as Chaplin acknowledges and utilizes sound's potential here, he reminds us of the more real assets of silence. For instance, Dictator Hynkel spurts a lengthy sentence to his typist, who hits a couple of letters. He bids a split-second expletive, and she types for numerous lines, tolling the carriage return. He's speaking pseudo-German, basically discontinuous coughs and stammers, with intermittent words like "cheese 'n' crackers" and "Katzenjammer kids." When a pen won't abandon its holder, in exasperation it's just repetitive, abusive English. Sound mostly is just ineffective rage.
There are other German terms that reappear among the claptraplike Juden. He's particularly keen on shouting these words, his face cramming the screen like Melanie Laurent's vengeful big-screen visage in Inglourious Basterds. Hynkel doesn't like brunettes either, but his counselor proposes pursuing Jews first. Then he can handle the brunettes and govern an entirely blonde world, himself the sole dark-haired individual around. He's so delighted by this, he waltzes with a bouncing globe to Wagner's strings. It's pure Chaplin, simultaneously fluid and silly. The nonchalant intermingling of terror and absurdity here and elsewhere is disturbing. It's not always hilarious and wasn't meant to be, but the celebrated gags and wealth of comic pantomime here are all indelible, a translation of the world into burlesque.
Watching Chaplin's simulations of losing physical control, he appears to be truly collapsing into inopportune objects and people, but with accomplished, athletic poise. But it's not spoof or derogatory commentary. It's also not just the idea that totalitarianism can be deposed with hilarity. It's also the idea that anyone can be a fool. And the disconcerting result of Chaplin's becoming Hynkel is that he gives him some of his own charm. Hynkel doesn't actually dictate so much as take counsel, fantasize, love himself, throw tantrums. He's too timid and persistently uncomfortable around the sunny, unsubtle Napaloni.
Chaplin relegates world history to a string of acts and caricatures sponged from his own work. The Gestapo are adaptations of the big bully who'd been chasing his Tramp since his dawn period. The Jews communally befit a Tramp variation, tender, crafty and reasonable in a mad world. Paulette Goddard reprises her enchanting urchin, but she's not so innocent here, with an enormous amount of rugged sex appeal. It's not much of a riposte to Nazism's upsurge. But Chaplin was up to something else. Ultimately, the Nazis aren't condensed into comic-strip clowns, but elevated to a much broader human madness.
The movie's charm rests on the link Chaplin draws between the little guy and the oppressor. The brutes chasing Chaplin as prey are under the auspices of Chaplin the predator. He's his own tormenter and the voice of defiance against his own madness. The casting keeps tying what its plot undoes. The barber momentarily wielding a razor over someone's throat seems more threatening than Hynkel ever does. Hynkel in his demure moments essentially acts like the barber. In the climactic sermon, Chaplin begins to tirade like Hynkel. Wrath with good intentions is still wrath. He attacks the dictator in everybody, and his equating of oppressor and oppressed not only suggests that the clown could've been the evildoer but that even the good and the victimized, characterized by the world's favorite clown, aren't to be entrusted with such power. Chaplin's best extra hint, having made his authoritarian silly, is to evoke how much destruction even silly folk can cause.