This Side of Lost

This 1936 film stars Charlie Chaplin -- who also wrote the script, directed, produced and composed the score. Chaplin plays his familiar Little Tramp character, who this time finds himself fed up with life as a assembly line worker and bounces from job to job interspersed with visits to the county jail and adventures with a newly-befriended gamine.

This was my first exposure to the dynamo who was Charlie Chaplin. As you can see from the brief description above, he was a do-it-all kind of filmmaker. Widely beloved and immensely successful during the silent film era, the advent of "talkies" pushed Chaplin and his character, the Little Tramp, to an interesting place in 1936. Modern Times is the last "silent" film of Chaplin's career, though it is not completely silent -- there are voices, though they are all from some sort of secondary source (a phonograph, a radio, a public announcement device), and there are some sound effects. But Chaplin uses these to further his satire of talking pictures and of technology in general.

Satire is Chaplin's bread and butter, and it satisfies here too. The Tramp haplessly, hilariously and heartbreakingly traverses the hazards of "modern society" with fantastic physical comedy and wonderfully inventive situations. The poor man just can't seem to hold down a job, having gone nuts at his factory job (getting caught in a large machine's gears, in the movie's most memorable image), and ignoring his duties as a night watchman at a department store by going rollerskating around the floor. He consistently finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, being jailed for participating in a Communist rally and for running out on a restaurant bill (after trying to get a policeman to pay it for him). And, in the movie's best scene, he is prey to technology run amok as the guinea pig for a time-saving feeding machine.

The Tramp can't hack it in this modernized world, and in his failure symbolizes anyone's desire to live the simple and idealized life in the face of conformity and a fast-changing world. The message is universal, and timeless. Chaplin's expressions, his bumbling attempts at kindness and generosity and his love shown through the friendship with a kindred soul are acting at its best. The production and cinematography is flawless (Chaplin was a notorious perfectionist and experimenter -- a dangerous combination for a filmmaker) and the entire 87 minute running time is full to the brim with wonderful scenes.

Great, great movie. We're excited to be seeing two more of Chaplin's films in the not too distant future.

(See this post if you're confused why I'm reviewing movies.)