Other Titles • Modern Times • The Masses (1936) • Moderne Zeiten (1956)
Synopses for Modern Times (1936)
1.
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. --Robert Horton
(15 votes)
2.
Charlie Chaplin bid farewell to silent comedy with this funny and poignant masterpiece. Here Chaplin stars as a factory worker fed-up with the job and his tyrannical boss (who keeps an eye on all his employees via a big-brother TV monitor). When he meets and falls in love with an orphaned street waif, the two dream of a nice suburban existence...but the cops are never far behind, chasing the vagabond couple.
(15 votes)
3.
The Little Tramp is an assembly line worker fighting back against the mind-numbing monotony and timeclock rigidity of industrialization.
(15 votes)
Mooviees.com is not the official site for this film.
All editorial views and opinions expressed here are for entertainment purposes only.
Movie Database
In Theaters
