MODERN TIMES
US, 1936, 87 minutes, Black and white.
Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Chester Conklin.
Directed by Charles Chaplin.
Modern Times was the last film in which Chaplin played the Tramp, a figure he had introduced in the second decade of the 20th century in a great number of short films. This persona continued in such classics as The Kid, The Gold Rush, The Circus, City Lights.
This is really a silent film although there are snippets of dialogue and sound effects . chaplin was to move more thoroughly into sound in 1940 with his satire on Hitler and Mussolini, The Great Dictator.
This time the Tramp is a factory worker and the film has the classic sequence of the Tramp actually caught in the cogs of the machine from the assembly line. He is also chosen as an experiment for feeding the assembly line but fails and is interpreted as having mental difficulties and put into an institution. At another time, he picks up a red flag that has fallen off the back of a truck and is put in jail as a communist. While Chaplin had an artful sense of humour and was able to create moments of pathos as well as comic delight, he had a very strong critical social conscience. So much so that he was prevented from coming into the United States for several decades, considered as too favourable to communism.
Paulette Goddard appears as the young girl who is caught stealing bread and shares the final adventures of the Tramp. She and Chaplin were married at the time. The ending is memorable and, as always, Chaplin composed his own score and the final song, ‘Smile’.
1. The reputation of this film in Chaplin's canon? Considered an one of the best American films made? Chaplin's contribution in terms of his character, comedy techniques and routines? Social themes? The significance of his foreword: "Modern Times is the story of industry, of individual enterprise ? humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness". Did the film bear out this subtitle?
2. The importance of Chaplin's silent film background and his use of visual techniques and visual routines, captions, the use of his orchestrated musical score especially the themes for each of the characters and the theme for pathos and especially for the ending?
3. The significance of the title? Its focus on America in the 20th century, modernization, industrialization, the Depression? The irony in the title of modern when the same difficulties faced humanity, and the pursuit of happiness?
4. The focus on the factory: the visual presentation of the factory and the machinery? The realism, the surrealist tone of a factory that had a life of its own where the machinery could control human beings? The focus on wheels and cogs, conveyor belts? How is this illustrated well by the comedy routines, for example, the automatic turning of the knobs and the speed of the conveyor belt, the experimentation with feeding the workers efficiently? The tramp character within this context? Audience traditional response to the tramp character of Chaplin? The pathos, audience identification with him?
5. The dramatic significance of the effect of industry and controlled work on the little follow? His breaking down? Needing psychiatric treatment? The modern times of psychiatry and then turning the little follow out unemployed and without future? The severe critique of depression conditions?
6. Chaplin's social presentation of the rally, police clash, the irony of the little follow and the red flag? The transition to jail and the little fellow once again being a victim?
7. The contrast with the world of the Gamin? Paulette Goddard's charm as the gamin? The film's filling in her background, family, poverty? The little follow encountering her and helping her? The bond between the two?
8. The humour of the Paradise House sequences? The humorous satire on domestic comedies of the time? The comedy routines within the house, mellowed by the charm of the presence of the Gamin? Each of them hoping for happiness even in such poverty?
9. The humour of such sequences as the skating?
10. The Gamin and her work in the cabaret? Her charm? the importance of the little fellow having to take over and the first words spoken by Chaplin in a film? The humour of his gibberish, the music, his actions? Its success as a comedy routine?
11. The eruption of the Welfare men into this situation, the continual hounding of society? The rights and wrongs of their trying to take the Gamin?
12. The importance of the escape, the final scene and the emphasis on the road, the two walking into the future, the little follow moving into the 20th century with the Gamin? The orchestration of the music and the theme of Smile?
13. How much humanity, sentiment, effective social comment present in Chaplin's films?
