Modern times

Bada0Bing · September 6th, 2006, 02:14 PM

I just got this movie from the library. I'm continuing my quest down the IMDB top 250. This currently ranks as #67.

Amazon.com
Plot Summary

Genres: Comedy, Romance
Tagline: He stands alone as the greatest entertainer of modern times! No one on earth can make you laugh as heartily or touch your heart as deeply...the whole world laughs, cries and thrills to his priceless genius!
Plot Outline The Tramp struggles to live in modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman.
Plot Synopsis: Chaplins last 'silent' film, filled with sound effects, was made when everyone else was making talkies. Charlie turns against modern society, the machine age, (The use of sound in films ?) and progress. Firstly we see him frantically trying to keep up with a production line, tightening bolts. He is selected for an experiment with an automatic feeding machine, but various mishaps leads his boss to believe he has gone mad, and Charlie is sent to a mental hospital... When he gets out, he is mistaken for a communist while waving a red flag, sent to jail, foils a jailbreak, and is let out again. We follow Charlie through many more escapades before the film is out.

Chaplin · September 6th, 2006, 02:48 PM

This is #7 on my personal top 10, it's the 2nd Chaplin film on my list (City Lights sits firmly at #5).

Sorta silent. Chaplin was not thrilled about the advent of sound, as he was consistenly supportive of film as a VISUAL medium. This is a hilarious film though, and the first time you hear Chaplin's voice on film (he sings a song in gibberish). Brilliant.

Bada0Bing · September 19th, 2006, 09:10 AM

I just watched it. What a crazy movie. I was pretty shocked at the end when I actually heard him sing.

I found some cool items from the IMDB trivia page:

Supposedly was to be Charles Chaplin's first full sound film, but instead, sound is used in a unique way: we hear spoken voices only when they come from mechanical devices, a symbol of the film's theme of technology and dehumanization. Specifically, voices are heard from:
The videophones used by the factory president
The phonographic Mechanical Salesman
The radio in the prison warden's office

The film originally ended with Charles Chaplin's character suffering a nervous breakdown and being visited in hospital by the gamin, who has now become a nun. This ending was filmed, though apparently only still photographs from the scene exist today (they are included in the 2003 DVD release of the film). Chaplin dropped this ending and shot a different, more hopeful ending instead.

This was one of the films which, because of its political sentiments, convinced the House Un-American Activities Committee that Charles Chaplin was a Communist, a charge he adamantly denied. He left to live in Switzerland, vowing never to return to America.