Modern Times (film)

Did You Know?

• A digitally restored version of the film was released in 2003, with the French company MK2 processing each of the 126,000 frames.
• In 2013, Cineteca di Bologna and the Criterion Collection effected further digital improvements of the 2003 version.

Plot

The Tramp lands a job on an assembly line during the Great Depression, but the relentless, repetitive stress drives him to a nervous breakdown. He goes wild, gets tangled in a machine, and wreaks havoc in the factory before being hospitalized. After he recovers, he is arrested when people mistake him for the leader of a communist protest. In jail, he accidentally swallows smuggled cocaine, and the resulting delirium helps him dodge being locked back in his cell. He then stumbles into a jailbreak, knocks out the escaping convicts, and is celebrated as a hero, earning special privileges. When told he will be released for his bravery, he tries and fails to convince the authorities he would rather stay in prison. Out of jail, he takes a job at a shipyard but quits after causing an accident. Soon after, he meets Ellen, an orphaned girl fleeing the police for stealing bread. Hoping to get arrested again and save her, he claims he is the thief, but a witness exposes the lie. He then eats a huge meal at a cafeteria without paying, gets arrested, and finds Ellen in the same police wagon. The wagon crashes, and she persuades him to run away with her. He finds work as a night watchman at a department store, where he runs into three burglars led by a former coworker, Big Bill, who say they are desperate and hungry. After sharing drinks with them, he wakes up during store hours and is arrested again for not reporting the burglars and for sleeping in the store's clothes. Days later, Ellen brings him to a run-down shack. He reads about a factory reopening, gets a job as a mechanic's assistant, but the other workers go on strike and order him to leave. Outside, he accidentally throws a brick at a policeman and is arrested once more.

Production

Chaplin got inspiration for Modern Times from the lamentable conditions of Europe during the Great Depression and a conversation with Mahatma Gandhi about modern technology. Chaplin did not understand why Gandhi generally opposed it, though he granted that machinery with only consideration of profit had put people out of work. He began preparing the film in 1934 as his first talkie, writing a dialogue script and experimenting with sound scenes, but soon abandoned these attempts and reverted to a silent format with synchronized sound effects and sparse dialogue. The dialogue experiments confirmed his conviction that the universal appeal of the Little Tramp would be lost if the character spoke on screen. Most of the film was shot at silent speed (18 frames per second), which when projected at sound speed (24 frames per second) made the slapstick action appear more frenetic. Filming began on October 11, 1934, and ended on August 30, 1935. Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance noted that Chaplin recognized Modern Times as the valedictory for the Tramp and deliberately included many gags as a loving farewell. The film uses matte painting in the skating scene where the Tramp skates blindfolded near an edge; the illusory drop was matte-painted, and Chaplin skated on a plain floor with a ledge. At one moment, Chaplin's back wheel briefly disappeared behind the painting. The drug reference in the prison sequence was daring for the time, as the production code forbade depiction of illegal drug use; Chaplin had made drug references before in his 1917 short film Easy Street.

Music

Chaplin wrote the film's music himself, with Alfred Newman helping to arrange it—just as Newman had done on City Lights. However, their partnership soured during the final recording sessions, and Newman stormed off in anger. The romantic melody later gained lyrics and became the well-known song "Smile," which Nat King Cole first recorded. A version by Jimmy Durante appeared in the trailer for the 2019 movie Joker, where the main character also watches scenes from Modern Times after slipping into a theater. This film marks the first time Chaplin’s voice is heard on screen, as he performs Léo Daniderff’s comic tune "Je cherche après Titine." Chaplin sings it in gibberish, mixing bits of French and Italian for laughs—a technique he would later use for Adenoid Hynkel’s speeches in The Great Dictator. Composer David Raksin recalled that Chaplin, eager to establish himself, would hum melodies—often in the washroom—and tell Raksin to "take this down." Raksin then turned those hums into a proper score, handling timing and synchronization, which Chaplin, a violinist with some musical knowledge, could not do himself. Raksin and Edward B. Powell received on-screen credit for the music arrangements.

Reception

Modern Times holds a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 108 reviews, with a weighted average of 9.4/10, and a critical consensus calling it a slapstick skewering of industrialized America that is politically incisive and hilarious. Metacritic reports an aggregated score of 96/100 based on 4 critics, indicating universal acclaim. Flickside named it the Best Film of the 30s Decade, calling it a thoughtful critique on the anxieties of modernization dealt with pathos and humour. Contemporary reviews were positive: Frank Nugent of The New York Times wrote that the film has the same lovable Charlie whose hands and feet and prankish eyebrows beat an irresistible tattoo upon an audience's funnybone. Variety called it grand fun and sound entertainment. Film Daily wrote that Chaplin scored one of his greatest triumphs. John Mosher of The New Yorker noted that Chaplin manufactures superb laughs, though the film is a rambling sketch sometimes slight in effect. Burns Mantle called it another hilariously rowdy success. Graham Greene in The Spectator praised the film, noting that Chaplin had at last entered the contemporary scene, and voiced concern that it might be considered Communist when Chaplin's message was predominantly apolitical. French philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty named their journal Les Temps modernes after it. The film earned $1.8 million in North American theatrical rentals and was the most popular film at the British box office in 1935–36.