In sharp contrast, opinions about the film in the immediate post-war period had been sharply divided. While The Great Dictator was not released in West Germany in the immedate post-war years, various German critics managed to see it. They all noted Chaplin’s departure from his classic tramp incarnation in his portrayal of a Hitler-like dictator, and his break with traditional filmic storytelling when he addresses his final speech directly to the camera and thus to the cinema audience. Writing in 1952, Friedrich Luft found that in The Great Dictator Chaplin was no longer true to himself; other critics, however, saw a fundamental continuity in Chaplin’s attempt to convey a “message of brotherly love in sober, egotistical, heartless times.”3 When the film was finally released in 1958, in sharp contrast with its massive success in 1973, it did not find a large audience.