Modern Times

Production year: 1936

Comedy G   Running time: 1:27 

IMDB rating:   8.5     Aspect: 4:3;  Languages: English;  Subtitles: None;  Audio: Mono

Charlie Chaplin is in glorious form in this legendary satire of the mechanized world. As a factory worker driven bonkers by the soulless momentum of work, Chaplin executes a series of slapstick routines around machines, including a memorable encounter with an automatic feeding apparatus. The pantomime is triumphant, but Chaplin also draws a lively relationship between the Tramp and a street gamine. She's played by Paulette Goddard, then Chaplin's wife and probably his best leading lady (here and in The Great Dictator). The film's theme gave the increasingly ambitious writer-director a chance to speak out about social issues, as well as indulging in the bittersweet quality of pathos that critics were already calling "Chaplinesque." In 1936, Chaplin was still holding out against spoken dialogue in films, but he did use a synchronized soundtrack of sound effects and his own music, a score that includes one of his most famous melodies, "Smile." And late in the film, Chaplin actually does speak--albeit in a garbled gibberish song, a rebuke to modern times in talking pictures.

Director

Features

Audio commentary
Featurettes/Behind-The-Scenes/Documentaries
Trailers/TV spots

Special features

Video Reminiscence By Music Arranger David Raskin
Original Story Notes
Shooting Log
Production Reports
Audio commentary by Charlie Chaplin biographer David Robinson
Visual essays, by Chaplin historians John Bengtson and Jeffrey Vance
Program on the film's visual and sound effects
Two segments cut from the film
All at Sea (1933), a home movie by Alistair Cooke featuring Chaplin
The Rink (1916), a Chaplin two-reeler
For the First Time (1967), a short Cuban documentary
Chaplin Today: Modern Times (2003), a program with filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Essay by film critic Saul Austerlitz
Modern Times