One of the special pleasures of later life comes with encountering again the works of art you loved long ago. It is both agreeable and poignant to meet your earlier self through books, songs, and films.

Among the movies that touched me in 1940, when I was twelve, one stands out. That was The Great Dictator, in which Charlie Chaplin took on Adolf Hitler.

The historical setting of the film made it especially important for me, and for all its American audience. Though we were not yet in World War II, Japan was preparing to bomb Pearl Harbor, and our relations with Germany were becoming increasingly hostile.

Since I lived in a newspaper family, I followed this history closely each day and was fascinated by Hitler in particular. He was clearly a menace who threatened our nation along with France, Britain, and whatever else lay in his path of conquest.

But with his Nazi paraphernalia and his propagandistic loud speeches, he also struck me as ridiculous. I was prepared to see him made fun of.

That, Charlie Chaplin did with gusto. I remember being fascinated as he parodied the Führer and his obsequious entourage.

I also recall how Chaplin made fun of the Italian dictator Mussolini. The latter’s girth made it easy to ridicule him, a treatment that I especially enjoyed.

When Benzino Napaloni  (Mussolini) comes to visit Adenoid Hynkel (Hitler), they argue about Hynkel’s plan to invade Osterlich (Austria). The two dictators cannot agree, and finally indulge in a prolonged and hilarious food fight.

In 1940, the only place where I could see the film was a movie theater. But last month, I watched it at home on my television screen. Though the smaller screen could not rival the larger one for visual scope, the film’s action came through vividly.

When I watch a film alone in my own home, I rarely laugh. But on this occasion  Chaplin made me laugh out loud.

The film’s most famous episode comes when Chaplin, as Hynkel, plays with the world: a global map that is also a balloon. Accompanied by the overture to Lohengrin, he manipulates his body into a variety of positions. At one point he lies on his stomach and, raising his rear end, propels the balloon toward the high ceiling.

I particularly loved Charlie in the role of a Jewish barber who looks just like Hynkel. Background music enlivens this role as well. When a customer sits in the chair, the barber enters upon a series of rapid shaving gestures that fit perfectly with the Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 5.

Toward the film’s end, Hynkel is mistakenly arrested by his own troops and the Jewish barber is mistaken for the dictator. He seizes the opportunity to make a moving four- minute speech in which he calls for freedom and unity for all people. “Let us fight to free the world,” he cries out.

The critic David Thomson can call the final speech an “embarrassing sermon,” but I still see it as an effective way for the film maker to decry the terror and desolation that came to rule the world of my youth.

This film should be seen as a brave and singular protest against human evil. Through his pitiless comedy, as well as in the barber’s final speech, Chaplin condemned Nazi and Fascist oppression. The conic spirit may not solve the problem of evil, but it can help people to face it

When, more than 60 years later, I revisit this cinematic art, I can only marvel at what Charlie Chaplin accomplished.