paddy wagon

Modern Times (film)

Modern Times is a 1936 comedy film by Charlie Chaplin that has his iconic Little Tramp character, in his final silent-film appearance, struggling to survive in the modern, industrialized world. The film is a comment on the desperate employment and fiscal conditions many people faced during the Great Depression, conditions created, in Chaplin's view, by the efficiencies of modern industrialization. The movie stars Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Stanley Sandford and Chester Conklin, and was written and directed by Chaplin.

Modern Times was deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress in 1989, and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Plot

Modern Times portrays Charlie Chaplin as a factory worker, employed on an assembly line. After being subjected to such indignities as being force-fed by a "modern" feeding machine and an accelerating assembly line where Chaplin screws nuts at an ever-increasing rate onto pieces of machinery, he suffers a mental breakdown. Chaplin is sent to a hospital. Following his recovery the now unemployed Chaplin is mistakenly arrested for leading a Communist demonstration when he was only attempting to return a flag (a red flag) that fell off a delivery truck. In jail, he accidentally eats smuggled cocaine, mistaking it for salt. In his subsequent delirious state he walks into a jailbreak and knocks out the convicts. He is hailed a hero and is released.

Outside the jail, he discovers life is harsh, and attempts to get arrested after failing to get a decent job. He soon runs into an orphan girl (the "gamine"), played by Paulette Goddard, who is fleeing the police after stealing a loaf of bread. To save the girl he tells police that he is the thief and ought to be arrested. However, a witness reveals his deception and he is freed. In order to get arrested again, he eats an enormous amount of food at a cafeteria without paying. He meets up with the gamine in the paddy wagon, which crashes, and they escape. Dreaming of a better life, he gets a job as a night watchman at a department store, sneaks the gamine into the store and even lets burglars have some food. Waking up the next morning in a pile of clothes, he is arrested once more.

Ten days later, the gamine takes him to a new home - a run-down shack which she admits "isn't Buckingham Palace" but will do. The next morning, Chaplin reads about a new factory and lands a job there. He gets his boss trapped in machinery, but manages to extricate him. The other workers decide to go on strike. Accidentally paddling a brick into a policeman, he is arrested again. Two weeks later, he is released and learns that the gamine is a café dancer, and she tries to get him a job as a singer. By night, he becomes an efficient waiter though he finds it difficult to tell the difference between the "in" and "out" doors to the kitchen, or to successfully deliver a roast duck to table. During his floor show, he loses a cuff that bears the lyrics of his song, but he rescues his act by improvising the words in gibberish while pantomiming. His act proves a hit. When police arrive to arrest the gamine for her earlier escape, they escape again. Finally, we see them walking down a road at dawn, towards an uncertain but hopeful future.

Cast

Charlie Chaplin as a factory worker
Paulette Goddard as a gamine, named Ellen Peterson
Henry Bergman as a café proprietor
Chester Conklin as a mechanic
Stanley Sandford as Big Bill
Hank Mann as a burglar
Stanley Blystone as the gamine's father
Allan Garcia as the president of the Electro Steel Corp.

Production

Director: Charles Chaplin
Producer: Charles Chaplin
Screenwriter: Charles Chaplin
Director of Photography: Rollie Totheroh, Ira Morgan

Chaplin began preparing the film in 1934 as his first "talkie", and went as far as writing a dialogue script and experimenting with some sound scenes. However, he soon abandoned these attempts and reverted to a silent format with synchronized sound effects. The dialogue experiments confirmed his long-standing conviction that the universal appeal of the Tramp would be lost if the character ever spoke on screen. Indeed, this film marks the Tramp's last screen appearance, and is arguably the final film of the silent era. Most of the film was shot at "silent speed", 18 frames per second, which when projected at "sound speed", 24 frames per second, makes the slapstick action appear even more frenetic. Available prints of the film now correct this.

Although not a "talkie", Modern Times includes a synchronized sound track featuring a musical score (composed by Chaplin), foley effects, singers and voices coming from radios, loudspeakers and a Telescreen in the washroom. Towards the end of the film the Tramp's voice is heard for the first time as he ad-libs pseudo-French and Italian gibberish to the tune of Léo Daniderff's popular song Je cherche après Titine.

The reference to drugs seen in the prison sequence is somewhat daring for the time (since the production code, established in 1930, forbade the depiction of illegal drug use in films); Chaplin had made drug references before in one of his most famous short films Easy Street, released in 1917.

Music

According to the official documents, the music score was composed by Chaplin himself, and arranged with the assistance of Alfred Newman. The romance theme was later given lyrics, and became the pop standard "Smile", first recorded by Nat King Cole and later covered by such artists as Diana Ross, Michael Bublé, Michael Jackson, Liberace, Judy Garland and Madeleine Peyroux.

In fact, according to film composer David Raksin, the music was written by him, as a young and keen composer wanting to make a name for himself. Chaplin would sit (often in the washroom), humming tunes, and telling Raksin to "take this down". Then, Raksin's job was to turn the humming into a score, and create timings and synchronization that fit the situations. Chaplin was a clever violinist and knew something about music, but he was not an orchestrator, knew nothing about synchronization, and was incapable of writing music for this film. The song, "Smile", was composed by him, however. Raksin went on to create scores for such films as Laura and The Day After.