MODERN TIMES
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
(1936) **** (out of four)
Not so modern, actually, but in the more than sixty years that have passed since MODERN TIMES was released, it has remained one of the indisputably hilarious classics of the early Hollywood era. Charlie Chaplin, the king of the silent film, made his last full-blown silent feature here, playing a hard-luck working class hero. MODERN TIMES flows effortlessly from set-up to set-up, setting a standard for physical comedy that has been seldom approached since, Woody Allen's BANANAS and SLEEPER almost being exceptions.
Chaplin satirizes the world of corporate bureacracy and economic depression, playing an assembly line employee whose job is to screw nuts onto the parts as they go by. This provides instant opportunities for humor as Chaplin tries to keep pace with a speeded-up conveyor belt (in a sequence that undoubtedly inspired the famous "I Love Lucy" chocolate factory episode) and later goes becomes mentally unstable and starts screwing everything that moves (in a sequence that undoubtedly inspired Ted Kennedy).
The movie shifts as Chaplin is carted off to an institution, is released and later sent to jail after accidentally setting off a workers' demonstration by picking up a red flag that fell off a truck and waving it in the air for the owner to see, thus attracting the workers who thought he was praising the virtues of Marxism and causing the authorities to see him as a Red. This kind of mistaken identity humor has been retooled over and over again these past six decades in movies and sitcoms but has never seemed so fresh and funny as it does here.
MODERN TIMES, besides being one of the quintessential film comedies and a thinly-veiled critique of capitalism, also has some poignant romance moments as Chaplin meets a beautiful orphan girl (Paulette Goddard) and the two fall quickly in love, longing for a house to move into. Chaplin tries to find work to save up for the house, first as a night watchman in a department store and later as a singing waiter (who forgets the lyrics and has to instead sing a hilarious nonsense song).
The whole movie is a wonderful experience, and it's even more amazing that such a piece of entertainment was constructed with no dialogue. But that Charlie Chaplin was a comedic genius, even if he did have the same moustache as Hitler. Aside from scripting, directing and starring in MODERN TIMES, he also wrote the famous song "Smile" for this film, half a century before Michael Jackson got his gloves on it for his effeminate cover version on the HIStory album. So the man has inspired not only the face of modern comedy but a certain corner of pop music as well, although I doubt that moustache of his will ever come back in style.
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