Directed by:
Charlie ChaplinScreenplay:
Charlie ChaplinComposer:
Charlie ChaplinCast:
Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Chester Conklin, Lloyd Ingraham, Louis Natheaux, Gloria DeHaven, Richard Alexander, Mira McKinney (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
A view of a flock of sheep seen rushing through a gate is juxtaposed with crowds of men pouring out of the subway and into a vast modern factory. Charlie is working on a production line doing a repetitive job, tightening two nuts at a time. In his office, the President whiles away the time doing jigsaw puzzles and reading the papers while watching the factory floor on a series of huge television screens. Charlie misses a nut and has to work twice as fast to catch up with himself. He steals out for a smoke but is seen on the screens from which there is apparently no hiding place. The president decides to speed up production by feeding the men by machine as they work. Charlie can't stop his repetitive motion and spills his colleague's soup. He is picked for a demonstration and a machine feeds him soup and corn on the cob, and then wipes his mouth. Inevitably the machine is as unforgiving as the conveyor belt. Charlie is fed metal nuts and the machine shoves cake in his face again and again. He finally snaps at this mechanical treatment and goes mad, dancing around the factory, tightening nuts as he goes. He is fed into a giant machine and goes round and round the cogs and gears until the machine is reversed and he is spat back out. He dances off out of the factory, tightening anything that looks like a nut, including the buttons on a matronly woman's dress. Charlie returns to the factory, clocking in as he goes, and causes more mayhem by oiling everything in sight with an oilcan. He is carried away still twitching to the hospital.
A cured but unemployed Charlie roams the streets. Finding a red warning flag which has dropped off a truck he picks it up an just as a large communist rally marches round the corner. Arrested as a ringleader he is carted off to jail. At the wharf-side the gamine is stealing is stealing bananas for herself and some children. At the shack where she lives she shares out the food with her sisters and her father who is down on his luck. Charlie meanwhile, is in jail confined with a huge man who does needlepoint. During a search for 'nose powder' Charlie mistakenly inhales some cocaine hidden in a saltcellar. And wanders off in a daze. He encounters an attempted jailbreak and, with his newfound strength rescues the Warden. Outside, the girl's father is killed in a street riot of unemployed and the little sisters are taken off to the orphanage. The gamine escapes.
Charlie hears about his pardon on the radio in is comfortably appointed cell. Reluctant to leave, he is booted out of prison into the unforgiving outside world. He gets a job, on a letter of recommendation, at a shipyard but soon loses it when the foreman asks Charlie to pass him a wedge. Charlie selects the all-important one from under the ship and the half built vessel slides gracefully down the slipway. He leaves quietly. The gamine steals a loaf of bread and is chased. She runs straight into Charlie who takes the rap for her. The girl is very taken by his kindness but Charlie's only thought is to return to his comfortable jail cell. A witness steps forward to say it wasn't him so he orders a huge meal in a café that he can't pay for and is finally arrested with the girl. In the police wagon she tells him her sad story, but as they round a sharp bend the door bursts open and they are free. They decide to set up home and Charlie gets a job as a night watchman in a department store, when he sees the previous incumbent being carried out with a broken leg. During the night he sneaks the girl in and they play house, eating from the cafeteria and sleeping in the new beds. Charlie finds some skates in the toy department and shows off by skating around the balcony blindfold. Unaware that the rail is missing he narrowly misses it every time. Burglars break into the store as Charlie makes his rounds. He gets a face full of wine when a shot from one of the burglars pierces a wine barrel, and gets drunk. The gamine meanwhile sleeps on. Big Bill, Charlie's former cellmate, is one of the gang and greets Charlie as an old friend. He is unemployed and desperate. They settle down to reminisce and drink. The girl narrowly escapes capture in the morning when the day watch arrives. Charlie is nowhere to be seen until he is discovered sleeping it off and arrested.
Ten days later the girl is waiting for him on his release and takes him to the home she has found for them. It is a very rickety shack but they make the best of it in imitation of their ideal house. Reading that the factories are reopening, Charlie races off to get a job determined to make good. He is the last to be taken on and is given a job operating a massive press. He manages to crush several objects before trapping a colleague under it. The whistle blows for lunch and Charlie obligingly feeds his workmate before he can free him. They hear that a strike has been called. Outside there is unrest and Charlie unhappily steps on a plank, which catapults a brick at a cop and he is arrested once more. In his absence the girl has got a job as a dancer in a café and she tries to get Charlie a job as a singing waiter on his release. He is given a trial and causes the usual chaos in the dining room, hooking a duck on the chandelier as he holds the tray high to avoid the crush, going through the 'out' door of the kitchen and drilling holes in the cheese to make it authentically Dutch. When faced with the prospect of singing Charlie is in trouble. He can't remember the words and although the girl has written them on his cuffs, they fly off in the first artistic flourish. He is obliged to make up a plausible foreign song on the spot and is a great hit. But at the moment of his success the authorities arrive for the girl. The pair make a run for it, and on the road again the girl is in despair. Charlie cheers her up and hand in hand they walk off into the horizon. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Reviews (7)
Modern Times reflects the unfortunate social problems of the time, tempered with a humorous touch and many witty gags and skits performed by the legendary Charlie Chaplin. Ultimately, Modern Times isn't as funny as The Circus, but I still laughed a lot - especially in the scene with the testing of the "feeding machine" in the factory. In short, a film where the joke lies in different parts than in today's comedies, but still manages to entertain.
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Until modern times, the Tramp belonged to viewers. Unlike Buster Keaton, he avoided longer-term commitments whenever possible. He flirted with girls, even cautiously kissed them at an unguarded moment, but he was not inclined toward family life, at least not outwardly. Several of his slapstick films characteristically ended with his lonely walk away from the camera, towards the next adventure, independent of the one just experienced. But Modern Times, Chaplin’s farewell to the Tramp and the Tramp’s farewell to viewers, ends with a shot of a couple contentedly walking together. The Tramp is leaving, but finally he is not alone; we don’t have to worry about his future. However, Modern Times was not only a farewell to the Tramp, but also to silent cinema and the genre of pure slapstick (because, among other things, of the lack of financial success – critics and viewers were becoming accustomed to films that were much richer in sound). Chaplin imaginatively uses sound effects for the first time to amplify either the dramatic (gunfire) or comedic effect (“feeding” the machine). He also lets the Tramp sing a few notes of French-Italian gibberish. In that scene and others, the protagonist is reminiscent of a malfunctioning machine, as he seeks different employment after being thrown out of the factory where he had served a clear purpose. Chaplin’s satirical portrait of predatory capitalist society turning man into a cog in a giant machine (I would guess that particularly this level of Chaplin’s work was inspired by Jacques Tati) resonated with the economic crisis of the time and, unlike other comedies, didn’t let viewers escape into a nicer world. Though unemployment, poverty, hunger and social unrest are framed in a humorous way, they are nevertheless visibly present. Thanks to the elevation of the mechanisation of human existence to the main subject of the film, Chaplain could exploit one of the main features of slapstick, whose gags often consist in people behaving like inanimate objects. At the same time, a weakness of Modern Times is that it is too closely related to previous films. Because of the alternation of the various occupations that Chaplin tries in his slapstick shorts, the plot breaks down into separate episodes, though these are directed with admirable economy. The film thus lacks dramatic cohesion and emotional impact. I will definitely return to Modern Times, not for a strong story, but for the gags with cocaine and the tightening of screws, and for Paulette Goddard’s irresistible gamine. 80%
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Either my demands for humour are too high (I don’t think so), or everyone is judging this old film taking its history into account. I can’t give a better rating to a comedy that doesn’t make me laugh.
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The personality of Charlie Chaplin does not represent an indisputable symbol of artistic mastery for me, as only a few of his films have appealed to me in the past, and even fewer interest me today. The ones that I think are worth watching again could easily be counted on one hand, but Modern Times is one of them. Along with The Gold Rush, it is the only film in which I accept his character as a tramp. In Modern Times, he tries to make his way through life and repeatedly tries to integrate himself into the life of a respectable citizen, but fails as a factory worker or a waiter. The girl with whom he eventually forms a relationship is similarly unconventional, so in the end, they both recognize that they do not fit into the modern era with its rules, orders, and obligations. They retreat and walk together toward their fate. Above all, the factory part of the tramp's story seems funny and cleverly filmed to me; the desire to maximize productivity leads to the absurd motif of a machine for feeding employees. The second highlight of the film is the scene in the bar where Chaplin's voice is heard for the first time in the form of a musical number accompanied by pantomimic clowning. Modern Times can be criticized, like other Chaplin films, for the outdated aesthetics of silent films from the first half of the 1920s. But in this case, I don't mind. I perceive his film as a social critique of the system during the economic crisis and at the same time a criticism of Fordist mass society based on the suppression of individuality. It is typical that the screening of Modern Times was immediately banned in Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. Overall impression: 80%.
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He and his social commentary, or He and his defiance of sound film. Anyway, I'll never forget the parallel with The World Belongs to Us because to see this Chaplin project through the eyes of V+W after they finished their own spectacle on the theme of the modern age would depress anyone.
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Basically, every scene is an uncontrollable fit of laughter – something I don't remember from Zucker Brothers parodies, Mr.Bean or even from Jara Cimrman's theatre. Chaplin at his peak not only puts on an inimitable slapstick show, but also turns the story into an admirably effective and moving social critique. For me, one of the greatest classics in film history. 100%
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Charlie Chaplin is simply a genius, and what he demonstrates in this film is proof of that. His satire on society is excellent and entertaining, yet remains biting as it should be. Moreover, some of the special effects sequences set in excellent backgrounds, especially the factory scenes, are simply marvelous. It’s good that he chose not to speak. Talking wouldn't suit him. A beautiful and unique farewell to the character.
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