Analysis Of Charlie Chaplin’s Film Modern Times

Through the years Charlie Chaplin had claimed his throne to the “King of Silent Comedy”. Chaplin’s film Modern Times (1936) pronounced a notable shift in his career. The main character of his film, Little Tramp, concerns himself with the critical social issues that took place in everyday lives during the Great Depression, including, the despotism of machinery, riots, misdirected bourgeois ethics, poverty, and the challenges Chaplin faced during this time as well. Modern Times is portrayed as a comedic film but when analyzed its touch on social issues overrides the comedic aspect that lies on top. Nearly every scene within this movie depicts a social issue that Chaplin was trying to convey. Altogether, the comedy is shrunk down to a trivial role to make space for these issues. In this film Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin’s parody of an industrialized society within the 20th century is experienced through a successful use of precise humor to denounce the increasingly growing fear of the times.

In the beginning of the film we see a title that says, “Modern Times: a story of industry, of individual enterprise, humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness. ” Nonetheless, we are soon to find out that the film exhibits how “individual enterprise” is nearly unattainable due to constantly advancing technology making the pursuit of happiness a mere dream.

There are then a flock of sheep that disappear into a crowd of factory workers rushing to get to their jobs. This portrays that factory employees are treated just like these animals all for the main goal of making a profit. Next, viewers are showed a scene of the Little Tramp at his job on the line tightening nuts and bolts, while the other men hammer them in. This scene becomes comical when a fly is bothering the Little Tramp and he goes to swat at it losing his pace on the line and running around to catch up causing everyone else to lose their pace as well. The president of this company obsesses over watching the workers on monitors from his office and continuously speeds up the assembly line making it impossible for anyone to keep up with their work. This scene quickly becomes serious when we realize that the workers are engaged in Fordism. Fordism is a social practice based on the standardized form of mass production (www. britannica. com). Fordism helped produce more products at a faster rate and made it so simple even people with low skills could operate machinery, however this system obstructed the working conditions of employees. In the era of the Great Depression workers were highly overworked usually working between twelve to sixteen hours with little to no breaks at all and without labor unions there were essentially no laws against this ( www. Historyonthenet. com).

New machine technology had many damaging effects on laborers in the twentys. Chaplin had once said to Gandhi in a conversation, “Machinery should benefit mankind. It should not spell tragedy, or throw it out of work” (Stephens). In the movie, the machine-age symbolizes the threat to submerge society in a weakening manner. The Tramp tries to catch up with the ridiculous pace of the line and viewers can see he is overwhelmed by the mind-numbing routine. During the Great Depression workers were terrified that they would lose their jobs to machines that could produce products ten times faster than them. In the 1920s the New York Times featured a book review titled “Will Machines Devour Man?,” accompanied by an illustration of a person being fed into a sausage grinder. (www. timeline. com) The hazard of being eaten alive by machines is depicted in a scene from this movie. The president gives orders to “give ‘er the limit. ” We see the Tramp can’t keep up to the machinery any longer and he literally throws himself into it being “eaten alive” by this machine. Charlie Chaplin bridges the connection of modernization of technology and horrible working conditions of these factory laborers. This prominent scene of the Tramp being sucked into the gears is a witty evaluation of comparing technology and cinematic technology (Howe, par. 20). This is precisely what happens to the Tramp he is turned into nothing more than an appendage of a machine. The industrial activity dehumanizes laborers by conforming them to the system and also automating their every action while on the line.

After the Tramp has thrown himself into the machine he is taken to the hospital and once released he is quickly taken to prison as a communist leader for accidentally picking up a red flag and landing himself as the leader in a workers’ march. But life in prison becomes comfortable to him (being fed regularly, clothed, and sheltered) that when he is absolved of his crime he is actually sad and tries to land himself back in prison. This scene relates to the issue of the twenties for two reasons. One unemployment rates were so high, with the highest one being 29. 4%, according to www. thebalance. com, during this era employees were irreplaceable making it easy for a boss to fire and rehire on spot. Secondly, factories were closed, foreclosure struck everyone's homes and farms, mines were being abandoned, and people were going hungry. “The lower incomes meant the further inability of the people to spend or to save their way out of the crisis, thus perpetuating the economic slowdown in a seemingly never-ending cycle,” (www. FDRlibrary. org). Hence the reason why the Tramp did not mind being in jail, he was out of a job and now he was in a place that essentially took better care of him than anywhere else. Unfortunately, this was the reality during The Great Depression, people would do anything just to go a day without being cold or hungry.

Again and again, throughout this film we are shown examples of the rich and powerful acting in ways that they deem to be moral but from a different perspective they actually take advantage of the poor. The child-welfare officers are a great example of this. When the Tramp meets Gamine she is on the run from the child-welfare officers because her father had died in a labor altercation and was now seen as an orphan. But the idea of “taking care” of her by the child-welfare authorities is no better than locking her up in prison and treating her coldly. One more example of this would be when the rich woman runs to the officer to tell him that Gamine had stolen bread, and makes it a point to tell the policeman to arrest her after the Tramp had tried to take the fall for her. This scene raises a big question of, is it wrong to steal bread to feed your family or yourself? It also makes you wonder if someone with money had committed a crime would they be treated the same way. In Fact, in the 1920s Al Capone was the biggest gangster of the time, it was said that he had made sixty million annually by illegally selling alcohol. He had lacked all moral values, either on his own or with help he had created the murders of many lives, including the St. Valentine's Day massacre, and through bribes he got away with everything for a long time. Even Though he was charged he was only sent for eleven years on tax evasion and not for murder (www. history. com). This demonstrates the complete lack of respect and ignorance people had toward what the poor had to go through every single day.

During the Tramps first night at his new job he sneaks the Gamine into the property and we can see them relishing the luxuries of which the poverty stricken people dreamt of. Their splurge on cake, sodas, mink coats, and a comfortable bed in the furniture department is realistic reminder that the Great Depression was not only an era of substantial poverty, but also a situation blinding inequality as far as the issue of wealth was concerned. While copious amounts of workers lost their employment, many more people were still employed, and most business owners were still making profits. At this time Henry Ford was still one of the richest men in the world. He still built lush properties for his family and himself, while without compassion for others shut down factories and firing employees when he decided his business was not profitable anymore (“The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Henry Ford,” Snow Richard). This example proves that the empathy from the rich towards the poor was non existent. While there may have been some that were wealthier and tried their best to help the poor out there were clearly very little of them because while the rich just kept getting more and more money it was at the expense of the poors wellbeing.

Lastly, when watching the movie Modern Times we can see Charlie Chaplin’s own struggle during these times. Modern Times was almost a completely silent film and that is what Chaplin was known for. But by the time this movie came out in 1936 the “talkies” had already been around for almost a decade. This brings up the question of why did he make a silent film during this time? Near the end of the film, The Tramp has not spoken are word yet and the audience is eagerly waiting to hear something come out of his mouth. The Gamin finds him a job as a singing waiter at the cafe she performs in. He agrees to sing because he needs a job and Chaplin brings an intelligible focus on the double predicament faced by himself and his character (Kamin, 149). When the Tramp tries to practice his song he cannot remember the lyrics so the Gamine writes them down on his cuff. While performing he realizes he lost the cuff and the Gamine says, “Sing! Nevermind the words. ” The Tramp begins to sing words that sound like nonsense, “His nonsense words are fluid mix up of Italian, Spanish, German, French, and English” (Kamin, 148). The crowd of people are still dependent on Chaplin’s performance because he did not speak English and the nonsense he was singing was still understandable due to his mannerism and facial expressions. This scene quickly relates to a slap in the face to the sound film industry since the Tramp is technically talking, but not in a normal way that the viewers expected, which makes it even more humorous to watch. Chaplin had finally proven his point that he was trying to make in the beginning of the movie, “Actions speak louder than words. ” But, despite all the fun Charlie Chaplin was making of the sound industry film he had refused to conform to society just as the Tramp had done throughout the film, as we can see he symbolized this by showing a lone black sheep in the back of the herd at the beginning of the movie representing this. Finally, the Tramp had triumphed in a job and this forms the genuine closure for the Tramp, while Chaplin himself had tackled and flourished his sound issue. The mixture of drama and comedy has become one of Chaplin’s greatest winnings that he is remembered for to this day. As stated throughout this paper, it is clear that Chaplin’s Modern Times is more of a social analysis on the automation of the future by the use of satire to evaluate the new mechanization during the Great Depression.

Chaplin’s dilemma of artistic survival in the present-day age of sound technology for the movie is mirrored by the character of the Tramp’s problem of survival in an undermined world due to advancement in technology. Because of Chaplin’s more socially awakening themes in his film, the conventional role of the Tramp was restricted compared to his previous films, which conducted an introduction to the character’s expiry. Modern Times touched on many topics that everyday people had to deal with during the Great Depression, which I imagine made it such a popular movie because it was relatable. It addressed the despotism of machinery, riots, misdirected bourgeois ethics, poverty, and of course the problem with the sound industry in Chaplin’s own life. In the final scene of Modern Times the film shows the Tramp and the Gamine walking down a road that is lined with telephone poles and paved smoothly. The Gamine is discouraged but the Tramp says, “Buck up-never say die, we’ll get along. ” They both have to move forward with their lives into the future as casualties of contemporary times, just as most of those during the Depression had to.