 Some of the signs in the shop windows of the ghetto in the film are written in Esperanto, a language which Hitler condemned as a Jewish plot to internationalize and destroy German culture, perhaps because its founder was a Polish Jew.The film was Chaplin's first true talking picture and helped shake off criticism of Luddism following his previous release, the mostly dialogue-free "Modern Times" (1936), after the silent era had all but ended in the late 1920s.