Modern Times [HD]

The Tramp In The Machine
MODERN TIMES opens with its credits being printed out over a close-up image of a clock ticking interminably forward. The film's first real shot is of mindless sheep being herded through gates, which fades into an image of factory employees exiting a subway stop on their way to work. Looking at this from a modern standpoint, one can only think that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

This is a film that I can watch over and over again. It's not just that it's an incredibly funny film. It's not just that its satire of modernization and industrialization still rings true today. It's that each aspect of the filmmaking pulls together to form something greater than each individual part. The story ranges from big topics concerning the Great Depression and dehumanization, while successfully balancing that with the small love story between the tramp and the gamin. In a theme that would be revisited even more powerfully in LIMELIGHT, the two characters need each...

Great presentation of an all-time classic
Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times is one of my favourite films and arguably one of the best films ever made. The movie remains incredibly funny while also managing to be a significant artistic achievement in cinema design and social commentary. For Chaplin fans, it marks the last appearance of his "little tramp" character and, not coincidentally, his last film without full synchronized sound. The film does include music, sound effects, and the occasional voice, including a segment at the end where we get to hear the tramp sing a short nonsense song. However, as a film released 10 years into the sound movie era, the film is also something of an enigma. It presents perhaps the most famous silent film character in a film that purports to be silent, yet it features futuristic factory machinery (reminiscent of Metropolis) and large close-circuit flat screen video displays that would have looked almost like science fiction back in the 1930's.

This new Blu-ray release from...

Charlie Chaplin at his sublime peak
The more I watch it, the more I feel that Charlie Chaplin's sublime silent MODERN TIMES (1936) is his finest film. THE GOLD RUSH (1925) is too desolate for my tastes, and CITY LIGHTS (1931) does not have the exquisite Paulette Goddard (then Chaplin's wife) as leading lady. MODERN TIMES is more episodic than other Chaplin features--six or seven one reel comedies strung together for 83 minutes. There are two incomparable segments set in a dehumanizing factory (in this silent film, the boss speaks over surveillance photography)--Chaplin gets caught inside the gears of a machine, while much later his boss, Chester Conklin from the Keystone Kops, has the same thing happen during lunch hour. It is hysterical to see Chaplin feed lunch to the upside down head of Conklin inside the machine. It is also pricelessly funny when Charlie is guinea pig for a new mechanized lunch demonstration that fails miserably.

Meanwhile, out along the waterfront (location work was done at San...

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