Modern Times By Charlie Chaplin: Humoring Modernism
As modernistic trends were becoming seemingly more prevalent in the production of cinema, Charlie Chaplin released Modern Times in 1936 to intentionally merge new conventions and ideologies of modernity with his signature desire for slapstick comedy. The film initially follows Chaplin (“The Tramp”) as he works a labor-intensive factory job, but the nature of his whimsical personality leads him to rapidly undertake other social roles. As intended, Modern Times created a sense of sanity for the millions of people experiencing unemployment and poverty in a post-depression era by humorizing the concern surrounding new modern reality.
In 1919, Chaplin founded United Artists, allowing him to have complete control of the content he produced. As a result, he took a significant interest in the critique of realism and creating satire drawn from daily life. As the silent era ended and modernism started integrating into the traditional conventions of cinema, Chaplin continued to uphold his unique style of filmmaking. He produced films that were socially real and fundamentally modern, receiving growing audiences. Most started to identify his films as “slapstick comedy”, whereas order always became chaos. To adhere to morphing perspectives whilst staying true to what he was personally interested in, a story introducing satire to industrial life was raised. Modern Times is concentrated around the theme of individual enterprise, relating people of all nations, economic statuses, and political standings together. The interpretations of job roles constituted a relationship between those suffering after The Great Depression and the film itself. Chaplin was fairly involved and well educated on the politics of his time, often going out of his way to further aid his understanding of The Great Depression. To build a spectrum of possible interpersonal connections, Chaplin incorporated aspects that could relate to all social classes at the time. This enacted what’s known as “the Kuleshov effect, in which the juxtaposition of unrelated material creates a new mental link between them” (Owen Heatherley, “Charlie Chaplin in Moscow”, 2017).
The industrialization within his earlier films appealed greatly to the Soviets, but the release of Modern Times affected that relationship. It’s possible that the film was construed to relate more to the struggling working class of the 1930’s, rather than a group who is not necessarily in need of inspiration and humor. Chaplin displays the same happy-go-lucky attitude while portraying various social roles, sparking good mental attitudes towards them. As a prisoner, he enjoys the free meals and shelter. As a singing waiter, he pulls his act together and makes the whole restaurant erupt in laughter. Chaplin utilized some, but intentionally not all, modernistic advances in technology and industrialization standards in order to make Modern Times the most equitable film of its time. Although technically a sound film, very limited dialogue is used. However, Chaplin takes this as an opportunity to debut “the Tramp”’s voice for the first time in one of his films. The character is heard singing in vague Italian gibberish while under pressure to perform. On the subject, Jeffrey Vance writes in an informative essay, “Chaplin resisted talking pictures in part because the Tramp’s silence made him understood around the world.
However, with the gibberish song, Chaplin ingeniously makes the statement that talking in any one language is meaningless in all others, while at the same time allowing the Tramp to “speak” in a way that is universally understood,” (Vance, ”Modern Times”, 2003). Seeing as how Chaplin could have taken advantage of new advancements in sound technology, he ultimately chose not to in order to reserve his position on how he intended his character to universally relates to any possible viewer. In regards to relating specifically to unemployed workers, the machines symbolize the greater power held determining the working class’ fate. The Tramp becomes an appendage of the machine, having it determine his pace and induces a strange urge to keep working after he had already stopped. This could arguably make a connection between people who were in higher positions of power at the time, thus making a “robotic” comparison. In regards to industrial workers, Ben Singer writes, “This sea change ideological concepts of the individual set the stage for and became ultimately tied to, the rise of capitalism. ” (Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and its Contexts, 2001). This excerpt exclaims how harsh the realities of workers lives were, to the point of essentially being trapped in an ongoing system. In the very beginning of the film, a shot is shown of a group of all white sheep with a black coated one in the midst of them. This shot is meant to elude to the working class, who have fallen into a cycle of being taken advantage of in mass production industries.
Additionally, Chaplin was known to be vocal about how he felt that farming was a far more forgiving industry to its workers compared to others. This contrasts the general working class population and Chaplin himself, as the black sheep. He was known to simultaneously be the “everyman” and the “individualized clown”, and encourages individuals who may be in similar situations to the Tramp, to lean towards being a humorist. Moreover, Chaplin recognized the sudden influx of industrialization and modernized his material to disrupt wider public discourse. The Tramp’s amusing adventures in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times provided viewers with ensuing comedic mayhem, both confiding to and mocking modernity, intended to provide bitter insight on mass production industries comforting those of the working class who feel contained beyond control. The highly memorable film successfully conveyed universal themes and gave tremendous comic relief, making it a substantial part of cinema history.
