BEFORE: Chaplin carries over for the final time, and Paulette Goddard does too - makes sense, since she was his third wife and all that. This film is from 1940, a time when it was much in vogue to make fun of Hitler, in much the same way that modern comedians have made fun of Saddam, Bin Laden and Kim Jong Il.
AFTER: Chaplin plays two roles here, and any time that happens, you expect to see a switcheroo, a riff on "The Prince and the Pauper". But that doesn't happen here until the very end, which is a little suspect. Why don't more people notice the resemblance between the humble barber and the leader of Tomania? The barber himself is still shell-shocked from World War I, so that's his excuse, but what about the regular people? Especially since they both have such a tiny mustache, and no one else has that. (I wonder if Chaplin was mad at Hitler for stealing his look - we still call it a "Hitler mustache", not a "Chaplin")
There's not much sublety here - Chaplin worked in full sound and used the opportunity to have his Hynkel/Hitler character make prolonged speeches with (presumably) German-sounding nonsense. His Tramp/barber character also talks, but sparingly, still preferring pantomime over pontification, at least until the end where he makes a speech to try and save the world. A little Wiki research tells me that this ending was unpopular at the time, since this was taken as Chaplin expressing his own political beliefs, and some people didn't like this interjection of politics into their comedy.
This was tricky, tricky comedy ground - to make a film in 1940 that showed the persecution of Jews and mentioned concentration camps while still mining that subject matter for slapstick and mistaken identity bits. To have a sequence where Hynkel/Hitler dances with a large balloon shaped like the Earth - showing his thirst for power and territory while still keeping it light. The only other film I can think of from that time that managed such a difficult balance was the original 1942 "To Be or Not To Be".
Making names like Goebbels and Goering sound like "Garbage" and "Herring" isn't exactly subtle either. But I suppose somebody had to do it. And Benito Mussolini becomes "Benzino Napaloni", but I don't see how Italy got named "Bacteria" here. Like the Hynkel speeches, most of the gags involving Napaloni just go on way too long, like when his train pulls too far into the station, then too far back, and so on. Or the negotiation/food fight between Hynkel and Napaloni - just goes around and around, and lands exactly nowhere.
In the end, it's a form of fantasy fulfillment - that Hynkel/Hitler could reverse his Anti-Semitic policies on a whim, or through a set of comic mishaps, seems like a sort of wishful thinking for people who were on the brink of going to war. If only life had imitated art.
Also starring Jack Oakie, Billy Gilbert (last seen in "Love on the Run"), Henry Daniell, Maurice Moskovitch
RATING: 4 out of 10 puddings
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