Reelin' In The Years -- Modern Times (1936), directed by Charlie Chaplin

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Powerhouse" by The Raymond Scott Quintette

       A couple of reviews and 13 years ago, we talked a little about Buster Keaton and his enormous impact on comedy in film. Well now it’s time to talk about the other giant of the silent comedy era: Charlie Chaplin. While most folks might only know him today as that one guy who did that one speech in that old movie that one time, that fact is that Chaplin was one of the burgeoning film industry’s biggest stars, the Johnny Depp of his day. With a career that lasted from 1914 to the late 1960’s, Chaplin appeared in at least 82 films, many of which he directed and starred in himself. He survived a couple world wars, a great depression, a McCarthyist witch-hunt, several wives, and the transition from silent to sound cinema. If anyone could challenge Keaton as the most influential comedian in film history it would have to be Chaplin, and a good argument could be made that it’s actually the other way around. Simply put, if the conceit of this little tour we’re on is to expand our horizons a little bit, see the big picture (or screen as the case may be), then The Tramp needed to make an appearance. 1936 had a lot of contenders for possible entries, Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Hitchcock’s Sabotage, the legendary Reefer Madness, but since I’ve already seen The Great Dictator then die had already been cast. If we’re getting Chaplin, we’re getting him now.

       Released in 1936, written, directed, produced, starring and composed by Charles Chaplin, this was the sixth out of eight films that he put out through United Artists, a company that he had actually helped found in 1919. Chaplin plays an unnamed factory worker whose days consist of unscrewing nuts on tiny pieces of metal. After a particularly rough day involving an automatic feeding machine and a trip through some gears, our factory worker suffers a mental breakdown and is sent to the hospital. When he gets out, he finds that things have changed; The factory has closed down since he’s been away, and it’s dragged everything around it into the gutter. Poverty brings about societal unrest and from there violence, and it seems that our perpetually unlucky worker can’t help but stumble into trouble wherever he goes. Yet when he meets up with a crafty street urchin (played by his future wife and even more future ex-wife Paulette Goddard), it seems like his luck might just be changing for the better.

       Now if you’re getting into this era of film you might wonder what it is that really separates Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, given that they were both silent performers. While I have essentially watched only a single film from each of them, I’m fairly confident in saying that it is in how their characters arrive in these situations. Keaton is a very reactive character I think, he stumbles into bad situations and stumbles his way out. Chaplin on the other hand is very active; While he certainly has his share of bad luck, a lot of his misfortune comes down to feeding his id or just outright messing with people. Keaton was a put-upon gentleman, Chaplin was a big kid. If you’ve ever seen Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean, that is very much a character in the Chaplin mold.

       Modern Times also shows us that Chaplin was very visually minded as an artist. Chaplin’s look has long since become iconic, the toothbrush mustache, floppy shoes and derby hat, and his movements are very expressive and physical, very much a ‘you can tell what he’s thinking from the back row’ style of pantomime. You’ve also got the intimidating, art deco machinery of the factory, and visual gags like a pocket watch getting caught in an industrial press and coming out flat like a pancake. It feels very cartoonish at times, which makes sense because Chaplin feels like a very cartoonish type of comedian in a way that Keaton could not match. At least not in Our Hospitality, his later films might be more farcical.

       Other than Chaplin himself, I also found myself quite taken with Paulette Goddard. Unlike other female characters of the time, coughcoughEllieAndrewscough, the street urchin (or ‘gamin’ as she’s titled in the film) has a sense of agency and intelligence that I found refreshing, and Paulette brings that out with a youthful exuberance. I know most folks will find it a bit skeevy that Chaplin’s character is hanging around a teenage girl, just as they were in real life when nearly the 50 year old Chaplin married the 26 year old Goddard, but what I appreciate is that their relationship is not really treated as a romantic one. Yes they literally shack up together (Chaplin sleeps in a chicken coop or something), and there’s a sequence where they imagine a life akin to the cliche suburban fantasy, but it feels more like children playing make-believe than anything serious. They never felt like lovers to me, basically, but two people who forged a close bond by enduring hardships together. Like Midnight Cowboy if it were written by an optimist, although maybe the guys in that movie were supposed to be fucking too, I don’t know. Just feels platonic to me.

       Jumping on to that point, I think what makes me really like Modern Times beyond the jokes is that feeling of optimism and camaraderie. The movie starts with this grandiloquent statement about individual enterprise and the pursuit of happiness, but we are quickly shown the truth: Working long grueling hours while the boss kicks back and reads Tarzan comics, and when they decide to close up shop your ‘pursuit of happiness’ becomes ‘hoping for a shorter wait at the bread line’. It’s easy to feel discouraged in such a world, that it's a cruel unforgiving place and there’s no hope to be found, but it’s important to remember that a lot of people are feeling that way as well. So if you really try and you put your hand out there, maybe someone will put their hand out too, and the weight of the world on your shoulders might start to feel a bit lighter. It might still be bad, but you won’t have to face those problems alone.

       The one thing I might categorize as a misstep is how Chaplin approaches the sound issue. We’re already several years into the sound era at this point, but it seems like Chaplin isn’t interested in letting go of his bread & butter quite. So you have sound sometimes, you have spoken dialogue sometimes, but the majority of the film is in standard silent format with cards and all that. Which I guess makes it feel a bit unique, and it leads to a fun bit near the end, but also a tad superfluous. As if Chaplin wanted a completely silent movie and he was pushed into adding sound, which might have been the case. Personally I wouldn’t have minded an all-silent movie, throw another one on the pile, but I also would have been fine if it had been a sound movie and Chaplin just didn’t talk. It works for silent protagonists in every JRPG, don’t see why it couldn’t work here.

        I’m a bit surprised by how much I enjoyed Modern Times. The comedy still held up, it had a message that’s all the more relevant these days, and it managed to perfectly capture that bittersweet feeling by the end that really wrenches on your heartstrings. Highly recommended, maybe do a double feature with The Great Dictator if you’ve got the time. So with all these good vibes in the air, how about for our next stop on the tour we take a look at one of the most popular comic groups in film history?