Tiempos modernos

We like to think that comedy has evolved since the time of silent film. We like to think that with the advent of sound and the injection of modern technology in all aspects of film production has made just about everything better. Indeed, it's hard to argue that so much of today's fun and farce just can't exist without a sound mixer and a few boom mics laying around. Ask yourself, if you put The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) or The Hangover (2009) on mute, would you really get anything out of it?

By 1936, sound had long taken the film industry by storm. In fact, if you listen closely to the moment Al Jolson uttered "You ain't heard nothing' yet," in The Jazz Singer (1927), you may have heard the careers of many shattering in earnest. Never has there been a piece of technology so seamlessly adapted to an industry before or since. To name the number of noteworthy films made after 1929 that were silent would be to name perhaps a dozen.

Yet with this adoption came growing pains. The cumbersome size of the Photokinema sound-on-disc machines and their components meant cameras had to stay bolted down. Actors had to not wonder too far from the mic or worse still, find a way to wear several pounds of bulky microphones under their garments. What once were dreams, stitched together by editing cuts became pale imitations of stage plays. The grammar of film essentially took two steps back.

Seeing this, silent era superstar Charlie Chaplin decided to stem the tide. In 1931, he directed, produced and starred in City Lights, a romantic masterpiece of stagecraft and pantomime that to this day is one of the best examples of the beauty we lost. Seeing the writing on the wall by 1936, Chaplin decided to give the Tramp one last hurrah before retiring the character. One last bow before the tendrils of technology transforms his career into a shadow of its former self.

Modern Times is at once one last bow, one last look at innocence lost and one glorious masterpiece of cinema. In it, Charlie's lovable Tramp struggles to adapt to a modern technological age while causing light-hearted mayhem everywhere he goes. Throughout the film he tries to conform to working as a security guard, a longshoreman, a factory worker, a mechanic etc. yet his peculiarity prevents him from being at a work site for too long. During his struggles he befriends an woman named Ellen (Goddard) who aids him in his quest for fulfilling work. They of course, fall in love in the chaste innocent way that couples did in the films of the time.

Modern Times is infamous, for among other things, a soundtrack that includes the earworm "Smile" composed by Chaplin himself. The most famous cover was crooned by Nat King Cole whose astringent voice had the poorly covered scars of a life harshly lived. "Smile" to Modern Times is perfect; both as a bittersweet anthem and as addition to the American songbook. It perfectly captures the Tramp's uneasy monachopsis while hanging onto a buoyant hope of finding purpose. It's at times sad, at times triumphant but always life-affirming.

Modern Times is also known for large, unique and detail filled comic set-pieces that despite being around for eighty years still coaxes laughter. One after another, these moments capture the absurdities of industrial life no other film does. Whether it be Chaplin toiling over a conveyor belt of widgets or literally being engulfed by a mechanical do-dad, He always has the perfect expression to reaffirm his humanity in the most inhuman of situations. It's pitch-perfect pantomime done by a true master of the craft.

Of course, being the film advertised as "the one where The Tramp speaks," Modern Times does succumb to the encroachment of sound. And unlike in City Lights, Chaplin decides to inject it as part of a large theme as opposed to a target of mockery. The film is book- ended by two moments of sound, the first of which is his factory boss yelling at him through a large projected screen. "Get back to work!" he yells while the Tramp struggles to find a moment of respite. The inclusion of sound as an oppressor, even a personified one is an effective means of identification. Those who have heard the phrase "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean," will no doubt sympathize with Chaplin's character in that particular moment in time.

The second time sound is used, is to affirm Chaplin's Tramp as a unique individual amid a crowd of onlookers. Late in the film, Ellen finds a job for the Tramp at a restaurant as a singing waiter. Right before his debut, he struggles to remember the words of the song he's to sing. He decides to put the lyrics on his detachable cuffs. Invariably, he looses the cuffs and, thinking quickly, begins to sing in gibberish. It's a prank pulled on audiences clamoring for the Tramp to finally speak on screen, yet it's one that's so incongruously Chaplin that one can't help but admire it.

With Chaplin having a hand in every aspect of the film's production, one can write an entire book fawning over the exploits of a genius so ahead of his time, we still feel his influence. Modern Times showcases that genius, filling the celluloid with beauty, pathos, humor and humanity. Years after most of today's contemporary comedies fade into obscurity, those centuries from now will still fondly remember Charlie and his lovable Tramp. I guarantee it.

Never a dull moment with the vagrant antics of Mr Charlie Chaplin as he seeks to impress on his audience the impact of living in the modern era. What would the little man make of the world today, as technology continues its drive to remove people from the workplace and replace them with more and more automation (who can blame them during pandemic times). A timeless classic that is perfectly geared, engaged and enmeshed for the unstoppable onslaught of technology and its perpetual modernisation - happiness beckons.

Part satire, part slapstick comedy, part melodrama; the great pioneer of film, Charles Chaplin, has created his own monument with this film. At the same time, 'Modern Times' was Chaplin's last goodbye to the era of silent film - which, remarkably, had already ended almost a decade earlier.

After nearly 80 years, this screen marvel still makes me laugh, cry - and think about the ongoing automatization of practically every trivial little thing in our lives. Modern times, indeed.

To me, this film is as entertaining and funny today as I imagine it was then, and it's certainly as relevant as it was then.

The tramp still rules. My vote: 9 out of 10.

Favorite films: http://www.IMDb.com/list/mkjOKvqlSBs/

Lesser-known Masterpieces: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls070242495/

Favorite Low-Budget and B-Movies: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls054808375/

Favorite TV-Shows reviewed: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls075552387/

One of this movie's most famous images--Chaplin sliding around inside the gears and cogs of a monstrous machine--provides a handy visual to go along with my opinion of the film in general: there are individual cogs that I remember as being brilliant, but when put together they don't make a totally satisfying machine.

Unlike "City Lights" or "The Gold Rush" before, or "The Great Dictator" after, I didn't get caught up in the narrative of "Modern Times," and I felt there were longer gaps between the funny bits. However, some of the set pieces in this are hilarious, most notably the scene where Chaplin finds himself strapped into an automatic feeding machine that goes berserk; and a nimble scene on roller skates that showcases his athleticism.

Sadly, "Modern Times" was an all too applicable metaphor for Chaplin's place in the film industry. New technologies were beginning to make his artistry obsolete, and the sadness of that is palpable in the film's final shot.

I'm recommending "Modern Times" because it's a very good movie. I just didn't think it was as good as some of Chaplin's other well-known projects.

Grade: B+

There is something fundamentally sad about Modern Times, by the very fact that it shows an unparalleled genius making his last move in the now-defunct art form with which he made his name. Charlie Chaplin, undisputed master of silent comedy, had managed to bluff his way through the awkward early days of sound, but by 1936 the talkie had got its act together, and screen comedy was dominated by the witty wordplay of the Marx brothers and the smart sass of screwball. Slapstick had all but lost its market, and the picture is saturated with a feel of "One last time…" A

nd Chaplin expresses his feelings with scathing satire. Modern Times is quite plainly a blast at many aspects of industrialised living, especially unemployment and Fordist production management. However the picture also takes several sly swipes at sound film itself. From the beginning, sound is associated with the mechanical, the authoritative, and the austere, with the few bits of spoken dialogue being via some piece of technology such as a radio or the boss's speaking tube. Sound effects too are reserved for nasty clanking and scraping sounds of machinery and things breaking apart. Finally there is Paulette Godard's pronouncement that "The words don't matter" as Charlie forgets the lyrics for his singing waiter act. Chaplin was of course very good at nonsense voices, as this and his Adenoid Hynkel act in The Great Dictator demonstrate, whereas meaningful verbal comedy was his Achilles Heel.

Despite all this vehemence, Chaplin is making one or two concessions to contemporary cinema. Modern Times features a lot more camera movement and close-ups than we see in his previous pictures, where he tended to stick to static long shots to preserve the best flow of physical comedy. The more technical approach here is always done for a reason – for example whip-panned close-ups are used for emphasis, and there is often a change of angle to punctuate a gag such as the half-built ship slipping out of dock. While they do draw attention to the funniest moments they disrupt the purity of the routine and are most likely concessions made by Chaplin for an audience not used to silent comedy. Modern Times is also much more variable and fast-paced than previous Chaplin features, skipping from factory to prison to department store and so on.

And yet, of all his feature films, Modern Times includes perhaps the most protracted bouts of silent comedy, far more than the story-driven City Lights. Despite its linking plot, the various settings in which the little tramp finds himself each provide fully-fledged slapstick routines, and there are very few moments in which point or poignancy are allowed to overrule the comedy. The picture is in some ways like a compendium of the non-stop gagging two-reelers he was making in the 1910s. Modern Times may not be quite the tearjerker that The Kid or City Lights were, but it is the master's final great showcase of his primary talent.