Modern Times

Youtube has a very nice selection of very good movies that can be watched off of it for free.  So I was looking for a specific scene from a Charlie Chaplin movie that is famous (from the movie City Lights) and saw in related videos something that said "Modern Times Part 1", so I was naturally curious.  Turns out they have the whole movie of Modern Times and I decided to watch it since I had never watched it all the way through.




For those who haven't seen Modern Times, its a social satire film written and set in the Great Depression.  It deals with many of the issues that faced the common man during the depression such as homelessness, hunger, and Jail.  The main character (The Tramp) bounces around from job to job because back then, with millions in the streets starving, you could be fired for almost nothing and taken to jail for almost nothing.  Some of his crimes he was taken to jail for were sleeping on the job, being mistaken for a communist leader, and dining and dashing.


Modern Times is one of the most effective social satire comedies ever written.  Watching this movie makes me realize how few great social satire movies we have these days.  Sure we have a few, but there are only a handful of great social satires in the last 2 or 3 decades.  I am a bit of a movie buff and using that, plus wikipedia I still cannot come up with even 10 somewhat mainstream social satires in the last 2 decades.  What I loved about old movies is that even though more subjects were taboo, they were often more satirical than films now and it takes watching a great old film to realize it.

The Hero attacked by an new eating
device during the iconic scene

While its a satire, first and foremost its a comedy.  Charlie Chaplin is a comedic genius and one of the greatest comedic directors in history.  Everything he did he wrote, directed, starred in, produced, choreographed, and often wrote songs for.  The amazing part is that while he wrote it, he improvised much of it too.  Any time someone can almost improvise whole scripts, especially ones that involve no dialogue at all, its pretty impressive.  He was a perfectionist in his work and it shows.  The gags are perfectly timed and his comedy runs smoother than the machine he is sucked into in Modern times.  That was probably the best scene of physical comedy.  Chaplin's character cannot stop the motion of using a wrench to screw nuts in to the point where he has spasms, spill soup, and even stars screwing anything that looks like a nut (but that is during his mental breakdown).

Got your nose!

The social satire touched upon is the great depression, but its much more and there are very many subtle jabs.   While watching the first bit when he is working in the factory, I couldn't help thinking about The Jungle (which is more about working class treatment than it was food preparation).  He is working harder and harder but they just keep feeding it faster and faster.  Its a statement on the modern industrialization movement and "Modern Times" that force people to become machines when they aren't.  Another theme that is prevalent throughout the movie is how it is not only hard for everyone in the great depression, but is hard for someone who has been imprisoned to adjust to life on the outside.  You here all the time of cases where people do things because they want to go back inside.  There is even a subtle reference to law enforcement's reaction to communist strikes and protests.

Charlie Chaplin's character of The Tramp is one of cinema's greatest heroes.  He is a romantic, a sentimentalist, and appeals to our Pathos (which is the style Chaplin wanted).  To me, The Tramp has always seemed like a symbol of the American Dream.  The Tramp may be wearing secondhand clothes and be, well a tramp but he carries himself like he is high class and he is always dreaming and hoping for a better tomorrow.  While he is beaten down by the system and by the assembly line, he has dignity and hope and is in this way, an inspirational character.  Lets not forget the fact too that its a comedy so he is also a bit of a buffoonish clown, but a charming and charismatic one.