Modern Times: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Modern Times
Overview
Release Date: 1936 Video Release: July 10, 2003 MPAA Rating: G Runtime: 89 minutes Academy Awards: None
Cast
Charlie Chaplin Paulette Goddard Henry Bergman Chester Conklin Tiny Sandford Hank Mann Stanley Blystone Allan Garcia
Crew
Director Charlie Chaplin Producer Charlie Chaplin Screenwriter Charlie Chaplin Director of Photography Rollie Totheroh Director of Photography Ira Morgan

Modern Times is a 1936 film by Charlie Chaplin in which his Little Tramp character struggles to survive in an industrialized world. The film is a commentary on the desperate employment conditions many people faced during the Great Depression, conditions created, in Chaplin's view, by the efficiencies of industrialization. The movie also stars Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Stanley Sandford and Chester Conklin. It was written and directed by Chaplin.

The movie follows the Tramp and a young woman, which he rescues from the authorities who want to put her in an orphanage, as they try to overcome their impoverished street life. The Tramp attempts multiple jobs but quickly loses them.

The factory scenes have a futuristic look and may have been influenced by Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Modern Times was one of the last silent films made, although it did include sound effects, music, singers, and voices coming from radios and loudspeakers. Near the end of the film the Little Tramp's voice is heard for the first time as he ad-libs pseudo-French and Italian gibberish to the tune of a popular song.

Most of the film was actually shot at "silent speed", 18 frames per second, which meant that when projected at "sound speed", 24 frames per second, the slapstick action appeared even more frenetic. Chaplin must have noticed this on re-releases of his earlier silent films, and decided to re-create the effect deliberately.

In one memorable scene, Chaplin's character looks for a bolt to tighten while he is being pulled through the gears of an enormous machine. Another has the Tramp picking up a warning flag that fell off the back of a truck, and waving it to attract the driver's attention. Meanwhile, he does not realize that a parade of labor protesters have come up behind him. As the police break up the protest they arrest the flag-waving Tramp as the protest leader.

The music score was composed by Chaplin himself. The romance theme was later given words and became better known as the song "Smile" ("Smile though your heart is breaking...") and was covered by such artists as Liberace and Nat King Cole.

The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.