Modern Times (1936)
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time...
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6 films that influenced Modern Times
What critics say influenced Modern Times
Silent films were already old-fashioned and out of vogue in 1936 when Charlie Chaplin completed his last silent feature film, Modern Times, almost ten years after the sound revolution began with The Jazz Singer.
The arrival of synchronized dialogue and fully integrated film sound with 1927�s The Jazz Singer spelled a certain end to Chaplin�s archetypal �Tramp� character, and yet he still managed to create two of the Tramp�s most enduringly popular incarnations, 1931�s City Lights and Modern Times, after even Garbo had started talking.
Chaplin was criticized for stealing the assembly line sequence of Rene Clair's A nous la liberte, but Clair got it back by lifting some of City Lights for Quatorze juillet.
"Metropolis" also has about a decade on Charlie Chaplin's cog-in-the-machine of "Modern Times.
One can see its influence on later works such as Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times" and "Star Wars," whose C3PO is based on the Maria robot.
Even comedies like Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times and the Coen brothers The Hudsucker Proxy can trace thematic elements back to Metropolis, where the underclass workers toil below while the administrators rule the upper layers.
Fritz Lang's brooding "Metropolis" (1927) and Charlie Chaplin's whimsical yet haunting "Modern Times" (1936) were early harbingers.
The Gold Rush remains one of Chaplin's unqualified masterpieces, up there with Modern Times and City Lights.
Chaplin’s Little Tramp was so entirely a creature of the silent film that he never allowed him to speak – except the gibberish song he sings in Modern Times (1936).
Among the others in the first wave of entries are "Modern Times," "The Great Dictator," and "Limelight."
A high-wire act balancing Chaplin's disdain for authority with his urge to tug at the heart strings, Modern Times is, alas, secondary Chaplin behind the incandescent City Lights, the original version of The Gold Rush, and the underestimated The Kid--just Paulette Goddard's exhausting performance as a barefoot minx causes one to eye the exits.
Several times, Chaplin introduces a new scenario or environment—the shipyard, the cabaret, or the Gamine�s shack (reminiscent of the brilliantly used lean-to from The Gold Rush)—and then surprises you with how quickly we leave it.
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As political as it all sounds, the film just as often veers into the classic situational comedy of the silent tradition, like the age-defying, forty-seven-year-old Chaplin demonstrating his virtuosic physicality in a roller-skating sequence reminiscent of his 1916 short "The Rink."
1931's City Lights was essentially a silent with a synchronized soundtrack, and Modern Times inches forward with its use of sound effects and music, including Chaplin singing a tune.
A high-wire act balancing Chaplin's disdain for authority with his urge to tug at the heart strings, Modern Times is, alas, secondary Chaplin behind the incandescent City Lights, the original version of The Gold Rush, and the underestimated The Kid--just Paulette Goddard's exhausting performance as a barefoot minx causes one to eye the exits.
The arrival of synchronized dialogue and fully integrated film sound with 1927�s The Jazz Singer spelled a certain end to Chaplin�s archetypal �Tramp� character, and yet he still managed to create two of the Tramp�s most enduringly popular incarnations, 1931�s City Lights and Modern Times, after even Garbo had started talking.
Modern Times is his greatest achievement, though some may argue that City Lights would occupy that spot.
As written, directed and composed by Chaplin, the film is second only to his best movie, "City Lights," with Chaplin once again using comedy as that great leveler, his weapon against a world he feared was changing too quickly to sustain itself and to consider the needs of the common man.