The last time I covered Modern Times, I was mostly marveling at Charlie Chaplin’s performance and comedic skills. I had never really seen his work before, and I was, quite frankly, amazed at what I saw. Silent film isn’t always something I find easy to get into, but comedy is somewhat universal. A good pratfall is a good pratfall. Chaplin’s Little Tramp is an iconic comedic character for a reason, and a film like Modern Times, with its famous set pieces of the Tramp getting sucked into a machine’s giant gears as he worked or the electronic eating machine are well-remembered sequences for a very good reason. There’s just something that is oh-so-charming and endearing about everything Chaplin does in this film as well as many others.
This time around, I’m mostly struck by how closely Modern Times is thematically to previous Stacker Challenge entry Metropolis.
Yeah, while last time I was marveling a bit at how Chaplin’s film included a communist rally and some cocaine-based humor, neither of which I expected to see in an American film from the 30s, but this time, having just watched another silent film, I’m just a bit surprised that they tie together so closely. Both films, in many ways, reflect how hard it is to be poor or working class while the well-off and wealthy have far less to worry about. The differences come down to superficial ones like tone and style. Fritz Lang and Charlie Chaplin both present an impersonal city, one where giant machines seem to rule everyday life, and to fall behind could mean utter doom. Lang, however, set his film in some unspecified future while Chaplin’s was set in the here-and-now of 1936 in the middle of the Great Depression but before World War II had really broken out. True, the war is on the horizon, but as far as America or Chaplin’s native Britain were concerned, the war hadn’t started yet.
It’s also important to note there’s nearly a decade apart between Modern Times and Metropolis. Chaplin was working in a time when sound was very much a possibility. Indeed, Modern Times does have moments of sound, including human voices. That even includes Chaplin’s own as he sings a nonsense song at the film’s conclusion with his incredible voice–I know the old adage is a lot of silent film stars lost work when sound came along because they didn’t “sound right,” something that even appeared in last year’s fictional Babylon setting, but Charlie Chaplin did have an incredible voice, put best to use in The Great Dictator‘s plea for democracy and freedom–but this is still very much a silent film with a lot of episodic sort of humor as the Little Tramp, along with the “gamin” Ellen (Chaplin’s then-girlfriend, later wife, later ex-wife Paulette Goddard) go from one setting to the next as they just do what they can to get by. The only real through-line is both the Tramp and the Gamin find each other and, some temporary separations aside, they stay together.
Now, it’s difficult to effectively mock the poor. Punching down in the world of comedy is generally frowned upon for good reason: the people being punched who are below you on the social ladder probably have enough problems. Punching up or punching even is OK. Those are people as bad off as you or better. It doesn’t appear to be mean. So how does Chaplin succeed where Lang doesn’t even try? To be fair, Lang’s film is not a comedy, and his solution in the end is the workers and the wealthy just need to communicate with each other better. Chaplin doesn’t attempt that because, well, that isn’t really a solution. After gaining and losing several jobs, the Little Tramp isn’t particularly put out by everything. He even tries to help people in his own inept way. Circumstances often lead him to the unemployment line or to prison, and arguably the only time he doesn’t go to jail is when he is actually trying to go there because at least in prison he had a roof over his head and steady meals. Instead, like the workers of Metropolis, the Little Tramp and other people he meets at his societal level like Ellen or sometime co-worker Big Bill (Stanley “Tiny” Sandford) are mostly trying to survive. Ellen’s story plays out more sympathetically at first, but the broad comedy of the Tramp’s situation always wins out. He’s not cruel or mean. He’s clumsy and perhaps prone to various temporary mental disorders thanks to the large machines he keeps finding himself working on.
But what do these machines even do? I’m not sure either film every really explains that, but they exist, and they need to be tended to. At least the Tramp’s story begins in a factory where he works on an assembly line. That’s production for the sake of, well, someone. There are goods of some kind being produced there. He’s fired not too long into the film, but he also keeps getting arrested basically for the crime of having no money. He’ll fall asleep in a department store or order food he can’t afford to pay for. Sometimes, as stated, he even wants to be arrested. And yet, he shows kindness to others, helping people when he can and often screwing things up for himself or others. No wonder he accidentally joins a community rally.
Now, I don’t believe Chaplin was necessarily trying to say something about income inequality or anything of that nature. His real target was probably technology. This film was made well into the age of the talkie, and he still chose to make it a (mostly) silent film. He didn’t have to. As I noted, he had a lovely speaking and singing voice. He just wanted to show, perhaps, that the silent film comedy was not as dead as it would eventually be with one last hurrah. Then again, that’s just a guess from me. It’s not exactly outside the realm of possibility for me to make an incorrect assumption, but given how often that happens in Chaplin’s comedies, I’d like to think he wouldn’t be too upset if I did.
NEXT: Charlie Chaplin wasn’t the only British-born comedian to leave his country of birth and find great success in America. Be back soon when I go back to Alfred Hitchcock with his 1959 classic North by Northwest.
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