Modern Times (1936) ft. Kieran B.
- Thomas Duncan
- 4 days ago
- 8 min read
Guest:
Kieran B (15x Member Club)
Host and Creator of the Best Picture Cast; @bestpicturecast on X, IG, Letterboxd - BPC, Personal Letterboxd
Previous Episodes (17x): Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1957), Lost in Translation (2003), Gran Torino (2008), Stalag 17 (1953), Shane (1953), A Fistful of Dollars (1964), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) Revisit, 12 Angry Men (1957) Revisit, The Shawshank Redemption (1994) Revisit, Saw (2004), Up in the Air (2009), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Gladiator (2000), The Lost Weekend (1945)
Cast:
Charlie Chaplin, Writer/Director/Music/Editor
Ira Morgan and Roland Totheroh, Cinematography
Willard Nico, Editor
Charlie Chaplin as a factory worker (The Tramp)
Paulette Goddard as Ellen Peterson "The Gamin"
Henry Bergman as the Café proprietor
Stanley "Tiny" Sandford as Big Bill
Chester Conklin as a Mechanic
Al Ernest Garcia as the President of the Electro Steel Corp.
Stanley Blystone as Gamin's father
Richard Alexander as the prison cellmate
Cecil Reynolds as the Minister
Mira McKinney as the Minister's wife
Murdock MacQuarrie as J. Widdecombe Billows, inventor
Wilfred Lucas as the Juvenile Officer
Edward LeSaint as Sheriff Couler
Fred Malatesta as the Café head waiter
Sammy Stein as the turbine operator
Background:
Modern Times premiered on February 25, 1936, 90 years to the day when this episode is releasing.
On an estimated budget of $1.5 million, Modern Times is said to have grossed $1.8 million in rentals for 1936 and making it a top 3 grossing film of 1936 (#1 San Francisco - $2.7 mil, #2 The Great Ziegfeld - $2 mil), and a top 15 grossing film of the decade.
Even at the time, critics hailed Modern Times as a classic and a seminal work of Charlie Chaplin including one publication including the film in its best of the decade list.
Nevertheless, the film did attract criticism for being almost completely silent. Chaplin feared that the mystery and romanticism of the Tramp character would be ruined if he spoke, and also that it would alienate his fans in non-English speaking territories. His future films, however, would be full-fledged "talkies" – although without the character of the Little Tramp.
Still, in the years since, the film has been widely celebrated.
The Village Voice ranked Modern Times at No. 62 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics.
In January 2002, the film was included on the list of the "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" by the National Society of Film Critics.
The film was voted at No. 74 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 2008.
In the 2012 Sight & Sound polls, it was ranked the 63rd-greatest film ever made in the critics' poll and 20th in the directors' poll.
In the earlier 2002 version of the list the film ranked 35th among critics.
In 2015, Modern Times ranked 67th on BBC's "100 Greatest American Films" list.
The film was voted at No. 12 on the list of The 100 greatest comedies of all time by a poll of 253 film critics from 52 countries conducted by the BBC in 2017.
In 2021, the film ranked 49th on Time Out magazine's list of The 100 best movies of all time.
The film was included by the Vatican in a list of important films compiled in 1995, under the category of "Art".
Modern Times has been recognized by the AFI on the following lists:
In 1989, Modern Times was one of the first 25 films selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Modern Times currently holds a 98% among critics on RT, a 98 score on Metacritic, and a 4.3/5 on Letterboxd.
Plot Summary: In Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin returns again as the Little Tramp, a factory worker who struggles to keep up with the fast pace of modern machines. On an assembly line, he tightens bolts all day until the pressure drives him nearly insane. After a nervous breakdown, he is sent to a hospital. When he gets out, he is mistaken for a communist leader during a workers’ protest and is thrown in jail. Even in jail, his clumsy good luck helps him stop a prison break, but once he is free, he finds it hard to survive in a world ruled by machines and money.
During his struggles, the Tramp meets a poor young woman played by Paulette Goddard. She is hungry, homeless, and trying to care for her sisters after their father dies. The two form a close bond and dream of building a simple life together. They face job losses, hunger, and constant trouble with the law, yet they refuse to give up hope. In the final scene, Chaplin and Goddard walk down an open road, determined to keep going despite the hardships of the modern world.
Did You Know:
The iconic depiction of Chaplin working frantically to keep up with an assembly line inspired later comedy routines including Disney's Der Fuehrer's Face (Donald Duck alternately assembling artillery shells and saluting portraits of Adolf Hitler) and an episode of I Love Lucy titled "Job Switching" (Lucy and Ethel trying to keep up with an ever-increasing volume of chocolate candies, eventually stuffing them in their mouths, hats, and blouses). The opening of a fantasy sequence in the film, in which the unemployed factory worker trips over a footstool upon entering the living room of his "dream home" with the Gamin, inspired a similar opening to The Dick Van Dyke Show.
According to Paulette Goddard, Sir Charles Chaplin was deeply and profoundly involved in the recording of the musical score. He spent days upon days in the recording studio writing themes, and only left when Goddard begged him.
The musicial score for the film, inspired by a sequence in the first act love duet from Puccini's opera Tosca, was eventually turned into a top 10 hit, "Smile." In 1954, John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons added the lyrics and title to the song with the lyrics specifically inspired from themes in the film itself. Nat King Cole did the original version that charted in the US at #10 and the UK at #2. It has since been covered by numerous artists including Jimmy Durante, Sammy Davis Jr, Tony Bennett, Robert Downey Jr, Lady Gaga, and Michael Buble.
Chaplin devoted eight days to filming the department store roller-skating scene where he skates blindfolded on the edge of the fourth floor, coming within inches of falling over the edge into the deep stairwell below. The dangerous large drop was actually a painted scene on a pane of glass carefully placed in front of the camera to align with the existing set and create the illusion of great height.
Discounting later parodies and novelty films, this was the last major American film to make use of silent film conventions, such as title cards for dialogue. The very last dialogue title card of this film (and thus, it can be said, the entire silent era) belongs to The Tramp, who says "Buck up - never say die! We'll get along."
The film originally ended with Sir Charles Chaplin's character suffering a nervous breakdown and being visited in hospital by the gamin, who has now become a nun. This ending was filmed, though apparently only still photographs from the scene exist today (they are included in the 2003 DVD release of the film). Chaplin dropped this ending and shot a different, more hopeful ending instead.
Chaplin allows the Tramp to speak on camera for the first time during the restaurant scene, but insisted that what the Tramp says be universal. Therefore, the song the Tramp sings is in gibberish, but it is possible to follow the story he tells by watching his hand gestures.
This was Chaplin's first overtly political-themed film, and its unflattering portrayal of industrial society generated controversy in some quarters upon its initial release. Writing in The Liberal News, the official magazine of the British Liberal Party, in October 1936, Willoughby Dewar observed that Modern Times "should be seen by every Young Liberal. It is, among other things, a piece of first-class Liberal propaganda." In Nazi Germany, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels banned the film from being shown because of its alleged advocacy of communism. This was one of the films which, because of its political sentiments, convinced the House Un-American Activities Committee that Chaplin was a Communist, a charge he adamantly denied.
Best Performance: Charlie Chaplin (Writer/Director, the Tramp)
Best Secondary Performance: Paulette Goddard (the Gamin)/Charles D. Hall (Production Design)
Most Charismatic Award: Charles D. Hall, J. Russell Spencer, Alfred Reeves, Bud Thackery (Production, Set, Art, and Visual Design)/Paulette Goddard (the Gamin)
Best Scene:
Factory Line
Lunch Machine
Sniffing Powder
Department Store
Back in the Factory
Singing for Your Supper
Favorite Scene: Factory Line or Lunch Machine/Department Store/Singing for Your Supper
Most Indelible Moment: Factory Line/Department Store
In Memorium:
Bud Cort, 77, American actor (Harold and Maude, Brewster McCloud, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou)
Blake Garrett, 33, American actor (How to Eat Fried Worms)
Shelly Desai, 90, American actor (Men of a Certain Age, Here Comes the Boom, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia)
James Van Der Beek, 48, American actor (Dawson's Creek, Varsity Blues, The Rules of Attraction)
Robert Duvall, 95, American actor (The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, Network, The Natural), 7x Oscar nominee, won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1984 for Tender Mercies.
Best Lines/Funniest Lines:
A gamin: What's the use of trying?
A factory worker: Buck up - never say die. We'll get along!
A factory worker: [to A gamin] Can you imagine us in a little home like that?
[dream sequence]
A factory worker: I'll do it! We'll get a home, even if I have to work for it.
The Mechanical Salesman: The Billows Feeding Machine will eliminate the lunch hour, increase your production, and decrease your overhead. Allow us to point out some of the features of this wonderful machine: its beautiful, aerodynamic, streamlined body; its smoothness of action, made silent by our electro-porous metal ball bearings. Let us acquaint you with our automaton soup plate - its compressed-air blower, no breath necessary, no energy required to cool the soup. Notice the revolving plate with the automatic food pusher. Observe our counter-shaft, double-knee-action corn feeder, with its synchro-mesh transmission, which enables you to shift from high to low gear by the mere tip of the tongue. Then there is the hydro-compressed, sterilized mouth wiper: its factors of control insure against spots on the shirt front. These are but a few of the delightful features of the Billows Feeding Machine.
President of the Electro Steel Corp.: [from the Telescreen in the restroom to the factory worker] Hey! Quit stalling, get back to work! Go on!
Opening Title Card: "Modern Times." A story of industry, of individual enterprise - humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.
Big Bill: We ain't burglars - we're hungry.
The Stanley Rubric:
Legacy: 7.5
Impact/Significance: 8
Novelty: 8.5
Classic-ness: 8.5
Rewatchability: 5.67
Audience Score: 9.25 (90% Google, 95% RT)
Total: 47.42
Remaining Questions:
Why does the Tramp end up in jail so often?
Would hitting a cop in the back with a brick only be a week in jail?
Have you ever heard of a Governor pardoning someone for stopping a prison break?
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