Perhaps all I can add then, is that... okay, sure, Chaplin himself later in life said that if he'd known while making the film that the Holocaust was actually taking place at the time, he'd most likely have never made it at all. But I for one am really glad that he did.
I've read quite a bit about Charlie Chaplin, and although I think most people would agree that, behind the camera, he was far from perfect, at the very least, the vast majority of his impeccably crafted films will, I am quite sure, continue to stand the test of time.
Was Charlie actually "a communist," or just merely naively sympathetic to "the cause" at a time when Marxism wasn't yet well understood in the West? Not that it actually is, even to this day! Worse yet, was Chaplin a perhaps unsuspecting pioneer of Hollywood's now infamous "casting couch" tradition?
Maybe so. And if so, and there really is, as I truly believe, an Afterlife, where we all eventually must go to atone for our often blindly committed sins, then so be it. And besides, far be it from me to judge.
All I know for sure is that I still adore Charlie Chaplin's films, and The Great Dictator is beyond doubt my absolute favorite. Because I could watch and listen to that perfectly worded and flawlessly performed final speech a million times over and never ever get tired of it.
And believe me, I'm no Marxist. Never have been, and I never will be. But I know universal truths when I hear them. And I know good art and timelessly classic artists when I see them, too, and as far as I'm concerned, Charlie Chaplin was most definitely one of the very best there has ever been. Whether he was ever actually a completely flawless human being, or not.
