Movie review of Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times"

The “Modern Times” is movie by Charlie Chaplin. It is American comedy, released on 5th February 1936. The movie is written, directed, produced, starring and music by Charlie Chaplin.  In this movie Charlie played a role of factory worker. His “Little Tramp” character is highlighted here. The co-star Paulette Goddard played the role of ‘The Gamin’. As Chaplin is known for making silent film in the era of sound film, this film is also silent. There is no denial that Chaplin is a great artist and by his acting he makes people laugh and also put harsh satire.

The movie starts with the clock, which is the symbol of control. This movie represents the modern problems like unemployment, industrialism, and people suffering for basic needs like food and shelter also. In the opening scene the sheep turned in to people which signifies that how industrialization makes people work like animals. Chaplin is working in a factory on assembly line, where he has to work with machine and like machine. The owner of the factory comes with the feeding machine because he don’t want to give lunch break to the workers. Once Chaplin for complete his work goes in to the machine and come back alive this depicts surrealism.

As A.C Ward says, “Throughout the period between the two world wars, the growth of mass production methods in industry created deep concern among sociologists who recognized that a lifetime work on assembly line processes was destructive of interest in the objects produced and a threat of death to craftsmanship.”

Unemployment is prominent problem which very wisely represent in this film. When Chaplin tries to give someone their red flag back people thought he is marching for job and all joined him, suddenly there is crowd of people they gathered because they don’t have any work to do. In one such rally the father of gamin died, strikes in factories, crowd of people for bunch of job vacancies, these all are the signs of unemployment.

There is many stealing scene in the movie and they just steal food. The gamin shows as stealing bananas and loaf of bread, at night in one store some men comes to eat food these all things shows that how people are struggling for the basic need like food. Same like food they are struggling for shelter also. Factory worker and gamin lives in a wood house and that house is very freckle and can break any time. Chaplin also shows the crime of smuggling nose powder during that time.

Chaplin also shows the hypocrisy of people. The restaurant where he works once he has to sing song but he didn’t remember the words of song and because of that he sing Gibberish and then even without understanding anything people are enjoying meaninglessness.

The last scene of movie is the factory worker and the gamin are walking on path and front of them there are mountains and with the hope of new world beyond mountains they start walking towards the nature. This is escapism, as in “Setting” by A.C Ward, E.M. Foster says that there is two reasons for escapism and one of them is boredom, disgust, indignation against the herd, the community and the world. This is the reason why factory worker and gamin escape from the materialistic world and starts walking towards the nature with new hope of better world.

Thank you.