A tramp cares for a boy after he's abandoned as a newborn by his mother. Later the mother has a change of heart and aches to be reunited with her son.

A swindler scams a newspaper reporter-photographer and then, not realizing where the man is employed, applies for a job at his newspaper.

一个流浪汉为了出风头，总是在赛车场的电影镜头前晃来晃去，电影导演则不得不频繁地将他推打出镜头之外。

当时正值美国经济不景气时期，物价暴涨，失业率上升，工人工资下降，以致罢工潮四起。卓别林扮演针砭时弊、讽刺资本家和统治者的流浪汉，在欢笑和滑稽的背后是人生的凄苦与悲凉.

Charlie goes to a spa to dry out, but he takes a trunk of liquor with him. He tangles with another's gouty foot in a revolving door. Later he thinks the gouty man is making love signs to him (he doesn't Edna, the real object of the man's efforts), so he signs back. He interpets a massage to be a wrestling match. When management throws his liquor into the fountain, when flow the healthful waters, everyone gets drunk.

Two drunks fight with their wives and then go out and get even drunker.

A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time..

After amusements working in a restaurant, Charlie uses his lunch break to go roller skating. Mr. Stout makes advances toward the unwilling Edna (whose father and Mrs. Stout had earlier carried on in the restaurant). After a roller skate ballet, Charlie (now as Sir Cecil Seltzer) is invited to a party at Edna's. All the "couples", including a new partner for Mr. Stout. show up.

Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.