The Film

 

Modern Times was the last silent film Chaplin made and it was considered as his timeless comedy masterpiece. The film's opening title - "The story of industry, of individual enterprise - humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness" - is followed by a juxtaposition of shots of sheep being herded and of workers going to work. Chaplin's character is first seen as a worker being driven crazy by his monotonous work on a conveyor belt to tighten the bolts and being used as a human subject to test a machine to feed workers when they work. The worker was fed up with the job and his cruel boss keeps an eye on all his employees via a big TV monitor. The worker's behavior becomes abnormal because of the inhuman work. He eventually becomes trapped in the huge machine itself, stuck in the gears. He comes out a little crazed, tightening everything resembling bolts. He loses his job and is sent to hospital.

Nevertheless, he is arrested accidentally for leading a communist parade. In fact he is just trying to return the red flag to the man who dropped it. After a dramatic incident happens in the prison, he is released and meets a girl. The two are dreaming of a nice suburban life... Since then, he tries to find job and want to make life better, but the cops are never far behind the couple. In the end, it is a hopeful ending, and the couple, arm in arm, set off down together a country road, towards the horizon.

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First of all, we'd better know some background when the film was being made. Robinson described in his notes on Modern Times:

Before the film was made, Chaplin has already preoccupied with the social and economic problems of this new age. In 1931 and 1932 he had left Hollywood behind, to embark on an 18- month world tour. In Europe, he had been disturbed to see the rise of nationalism and the social effects of the Depression, of unemployment and of automation. He read books on economic theory; and devised his own Economic Solution, is an intelligent exercise in utopian idealism, based on a more equitable distribution not just of wealth but of work. In 1931 he told a newspaper interviewer, "Unemployment is the vital question... Machinery should benefit mankind. It should not spell tragedy and throw it out of work." (1)

As a result, in the film Modern Times, Chaplin transforms his observations and anxieties into comedy. Chaplin was inspired by the assembly line of the automobile plants at that time, so the movie begins with the worker working on an assembly line for a steel corporation. His job is fastening bolts all day as they come down a conveyor belt. Chaplin humorously demonstrates the monotony of the routine of capitalism mass production and the inhuman treatment from the boss. Because of this point, his film became controversial and has several versions of interpretations.

 

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Siliang Xu yu274663@yorku.ca