Modern Times (1936)

This mostly silent movie deals with a little man , a disgraced factory worker who goes insane from his repetitious job at an assembly líne . At the same time the exigent boss demands him for greatest efficiency and speed at work . As the unfortunate man moving from hapless factory worker to singing waiter and ultimately triumphing along the way .

An interesting and thought-provoking Chaplin film encompassing the tyranny of Machine over man, this great film has more relevance nowadays than ever. The pic contains a sour denounce on capitalism , industrialization and human explotiation . This is a vintage flick much in the fashion that sound films offended his pantomimist's sensibilities . This is a silent movie , being the only dialogue a song sung by Chaplin in gibberish Italian .Chaplin gives an awesome and sympathetic performance as a labourer who goes crazy and triumphs over adversity , just as Charles the film director proved victorious over sound . Chaplin also composed the score which incorporates the charming tune : Smile. His spouse to be Paulette Goddard is attractive in the femenine lead , playing a poor orphan. Look for a young Gloria de Haven , as one of Paulette Goddard's Sisters . She is the real-life daughter of Chaplin's assistant director .

The motion picture was masterfully directed by Charles Chaplin .This was one of the longest ones to that date . Chaplin previously directed 2 or 3 reel short movies, such as : Our hero, The fireman, Night at the show , The adventurer, The floorwalker, The cure , The inmigrant , The circus , Burlesque on Carmen , among others . After that , he made long feature films such as : The gold Rush , The kid , City lights , The great dictator , Monseur Verdoux , Limelight, A king of New York and his last one : A countess from Hong Kong . Rating 8/10 . Better than average . Well worth watching .

Fmovies: I saw this as a child and my laughter at the feeding machine scene was so WILD that I have never laughed so hard at anything again in my entire life. I literally slid out of my chair to the ground gasping for air. The whole film is absurd and brilliant, crisply realized by a comedy genius but for me that one moment transcends even greatness and touches the sublime where is poetry and God. Seeing the 'feeding machine' again as an adult there are tears mixed with laughter. To eat is to live, it is the personal realm and the invasion of the authoritarian state into the personal realm is so arrogant and pompous that it frightens me a lot to see how far it has gone as 'they' regulate our speech, our food, our sex lives according to the latest PC doctrines of 'nice'. Chaplin would not have recognized this new world of ours where the working class he represents here is ruled by progressive billionaires spouting inanities.

Long after most people thought the silent movie had been buried forever, Chaplin brought his "Little Fellow" out of mothballs for one more magnificent motion picture. The Tramp is trapped in a factory, performing mind-numbing repetitive tasks, and finally he goes hilariously berserk. I started laughing the instant I saw the lady in the dress with the buttons. Like "City Lights," this film is a collection of charming vignettes, this time revolving around The Tramp's desire to settle down with gamin Paulette Goddard. From the Tramp's encounter with an assembly-line "feeding machine" to his unsuccessful stints as night watchman and waiter, this movie is packed full of delights. Chaplin never speaks, but he does sing a little. This work of genius can make you smile though your heart is breaking.

Modern Times fmovies. This movie is a must see for anyone who loves comedies. Charlie Chaplin is at his all-time best as the Tramp, and he has wonderful chemistry with Paulette Goddard's Gamin. Together, they provide an hour and a half of non-stop laughs. My favorite parts are when he is fed by a "modern" machine that goes awry, and then when Charlie goes crazy in the factory. The situations and expressions are hilarious! Please see this movie soon...you definitely will not regret it.

Hilarious, touching, anarchic, revolutionary, realist, surreal, of its time, timeless - Modern Times is a multifaceted work of genius. When it's over and you recall the number of sight gags and magic sequences Chaplin has packed into 85 minutes, it is incredible - the conveyer belt and nut turning; Chaplin caught in the cogwheels; the feeding machine; the Red Flag march; the "nose powder"; the roller skating ballet; the waiter with tray caught up in the dance (my favourite); the gibberish song - and many more. Then there is his mixing of silent and sound techniques, making the best of both worlds, not falling between stools as some directors might have done.

Of course, there is also a political and social dimension; many of the scenes refer to the impact of technical advances, of bureaucracy, and of the then current depression, on the ordinary "little man". And it is the little man, the individual caught up in society's complex machinery, whom Chaplin championed. He may have sympathised with left-wing political parties and unions in so far as they supported ordinary working people, but Chaplin's essential beliefs are enshrined in the final "words" and shot, with him telling Paulette Godard, that she should keep smiling, they will get along, as they walk, a couple of individuals, into an uncertain future. Beyond politics, the individual has to rely on his or her own resources and spirit to survive.

It is a testament to Chaplin's filmmaking skills that he is able to impose such significant meaning on what really boils down to little more than a series of comedy skits strung together on an apparently flimsy clothesline of a plot. Indeed, the cinematic value of Modern Times is unquestionable, but it is ironically noteworthy that such a simple and even blocky plot is made into such a memorable film experience and delivers such a strong, time-transcending message about poverty stricken populations.

It is no secret that Charlie Chaplin was more or less dragged into the sound era against his will. In the early part of the 20th century, he had built a tremendous career as a silent film actor, and had created a character, the Tramp, that was purely a silent film character who could not be transported into the sound era. Charlie had built his career and his popularity with the Tramp, and the coming of sound to the cinema meant the end of that character (as illustrated by Robert Downey Jr.'s Charlie Chaplin in the 1992 film Chaplin, `The Tram CAN'T talk. The minute he talks, he's dead.'). Chaplin delivers to the world a cynical satire about modern technology as well as his own ode to the silent film with Modern Times.

Charlie plays the part of a man who works a dehumanizing position in a factory in which he is little more than a component of a machine, and he is controlled like a pawn by the menacing boss, who we see mostly as a looming face on a tremendous television screen. Clearly, the most memorable scenes in the film involve something to do with the factory, such as Charlie's brief trip into the innards of the machine, as well as his warm-hearted efforts to feed lunch to a man who has inadvertently become lodged in a machine, with only his head free. However, there is a very noteworthy but fairly subtle subplot that quietly reveals Chaplin's fondness for the silent film.

The first and most obvious thing is that for the most part, this is a silent film. There are intertitles, there is precious little dialogue, and the film's main character doesn't utter a sound until near the end of the film. But there are also a lot of other things that more subtly hint that silent films are better than sound films. For one thing, the only intelligible words spoken in the film are done so through some sort of barrier. There is the factory boss speaking demandingly through the television screen, and the feeding machine company speaking through the radio as they try to sell the feeding machine to the factory boss. This becomes the most obvious by the fact that anyone speaking on screen - such as the factory boss as he tells the men that the feeding machine is not practical - only does so in intertitles. We know that dialogue can be put in the film, but Chaplin chooses only to do this in a detached and mechanized way.

There is also a very strong example of Chaplin's endless sympathy for poor people at several points in this film. The most significant example of this is his interactions with the Gamin, played by Paulette Goddard, as well as his nearly constant contempt toward the police. After the scene where he gorges himself at a small diner (note that the window said `Cafeteria: Tables For Ladies'), he casually calls an officer into the diner and tells him to pay the tab, unable to pay it himself. As he is handcuffed to the officer, he gets a cigar from a nearby vendor and hands some large candy bars to a couple of small children nearby, who look to be the type of children