Modern Times (1936)

In Modern Times (1936), the still-silent Tramp, with his familiar small Derby hat, mustache, large boots, baggy pants, tight jacket and cane makes his last screen appearance. Filmed between 1932 and 1936, it was directed, written, scored, and produced by Chaplin himself - and he also starred in his own 'one-man show' with his current wife and kindred spirit Paulette Goddard. This was Chaplin's first film after his successful City Lights (1931), released nine years after the advent of 'talkies.'

This social protest film is Charlie Chaplin's final stand against the synchronized sound film - and it is also his last full-length "silent film" - although it must be noted that it is a quasi-silent film. There is no traditional, synchronized voice dialogue in the film - but voices and sounds do emanate from machines (e.g., the feeding machine), television screens (i.e., the Big Brother screen - pre-dating George Orwell's book 1984, written/published in 1949), and Chaplin's actual voice is heard singing an imaginary, nonsense song of gibberish. Special sound effects and an original musical score (by composer Chaplin, including various musical themes from "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum," "Prisoner's Song," "How Dry I Am," and "In the Evening By the Moonlight") enhance the pantomime.

Set in the 1930s during the Great Depression era, the film's main concerns (and those of the oppressed Tramp) echo those of millions of people at the time - unemployment, poverty, and hunger. It has a number of wonderfully inventive and memorable routines and scenes that proclaim the frustrating struggle by proletarian man against the dehumanizing effects of the machine in the Industrial Age (at the time of Henry Ford's assembly line), and various social institutions.

The scenes of the Tramp find him alternating between scenes as an assembly-line factory worker (where he is literally fed by a machine and then - when the monotony overtakes him - becomes the 'food' in the cogs and gears of another machine), a shipyard worker, a department store night watchman, an overstressed singing waiter, or an occupant in jail. The Tramp also finds himself dealing with various authority figures during his exploits: a 'Big Brother' factory boss, a minister, juvenile child-care authorities, a sheriff, a shipyard foreman, a department store manager, etc.

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Under the superimposed credits, a clock face approaches 6 o'clock. The foreword explains the film's theme: "'Modern Times.' A story of industry, of individual enterprise - humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness." The film opens with an overhead shot of a flock of sheep jostling in their sheep pen, and rushing through a chute. Instantly, the sheep dissolve into a similar overhead shot of industrial workers pushing out of a subway station at rush hour on their way to work in a factory.

In an upper executive office level of a steelworks factory, the Electro Steel Corp., a "Big Brother" manager/President (Allan Garcia) works on a boring puzzle, reads the comics in the newspaper, and is served by his secretary. He switches on a two-way TV screen with on-line audio and video transmission (when practical TV was only a dream) where he can view all parts of the plant operation. He orders one of his foremen, in the first synchronized speech in the film to hurry production on the line: "Section 5 - speed 'er up - 41."

In one of the film's great opening scenes, the conveyor belt sequence, a masterpiece of choreography, the Tramp is a factory worker (Charlie Chaplin) whose job it is to tighten bolts on an endless series of machine parts - he is a small cog in the factory that exploits its workers. The key to successful nut-tightening is to perform his movements and tasks with clock-like tempo and precision. [This scene illustrates the American factory's obsession with time and automation.] From his work station on the assembly-line, he holds wrenches in both hands to tighten nuts on a long stream of steel plates carried on the conveyor belt production line. Above him in the hierarchy of jobs, the foreman urges him all the time to keep up with the belt, and bullies him. When he pauses and itches for a moment, makes a gesture, or brushes away a troublesome fly, he causes tremendous, disruptive chaos for fellow workers down the production line, and frantically rushes to catch up and restore order. The results of his innocent, personal behavior have much larger consequences. [The popular TV series I Love Lucy revived the hilarious assembly line scene in the episode titled "Job Switching" (aka "The Candy Factory"), aired in the show's second season in mid-September 1952.]

During a short break, he cannot stop the jerky, rhythmic movements of his nut-tightening - the trauma of work has left him with a nervous tick. A "Big Brother" screen of his employer in the men's room reprimands him when he sneaks a cigarette: "Hey, quit stalling. Get back to work. Go on."

In his office, the President is shown a new aid to productivity - a method to shorten the lunch hour break and improve worker productivity. The sales pitch for a feeding machine is delivered by a mechanical salesman on a phonograph record:

a practical device which automatically feeds your men while at work. Don't stop for lunch. Be ahead of your competitor...the feeding machine will eliminate the lunch hour, increase your production, and decrease your overhead.

The device is a mechanical, automated, aerodynamically-styled, silent feeding machine which features a revolving table, an automaton soup plate, an automatic food pusher, a revolving low and high gear corncob feeder, and a hydro-compressed sterilized mouth wipe.

At lunch time, the break is sounded and the line stops, but the Tramp is so programmed that he starts tightening buttons on a woman's bottom. And he cannot control jerky arm movements that cause him to spill his co-worker's soup. He is chosen as a guinea pig to test and demonstrate the feeding device. Naturally, the mechanized meal machine shorts out and goes haywire - making the food inedible in an unforgettable scene. The spinning corn cob server goes wild, the soup is tipped and dumped down his front and hurled in his face, metal bolts are shoved into his mouth instead of food, a dessert shortcake is forced into his face, and the mouth wipe repeatedly pummels him in the mouth. The President is unhappy with the demonstration: "It's no good - it isn't practical."

Back at the job in the late afternoon after his disastrous, nightmarish lunch, he rejoins his co-workers on the assembly line. The boss has ordered production increases: "Section 5 - give 'em the limit," so the conveyor belt is sped up - a hilarious, frenzied scene as the Tramp makes an heroic effort to keep up. Under the strain of the job, he finally goes beserk, slowly driven insane and engulfed by the assembly line. He literally lies prone on the belt and is dragged, swallowed and eaten up by the whizzing wheels, gears, and cogs of the monstrous machine. His body snakes its way through the gears until the production line's direction is reversed and he finally emerges free of the machine. He has gone completely crazy and insane.

In a trance-like state, with wrenches aloft, he demonically tightens everything in sight, including people's noses. With arms aflutter, he dances a beautiful but mad ballet. He chases the woman with the buttons on her bottom through the factory to the outdoors. There, he eagerly pursues a large-breasted woman with two buttons on her front. Back in the factory's control room, he pulls all the levers and switches in sight, causing explosions in the equipment. He continues his mad ballet with an oil can. He is hustled off in a car by a white-coated attendant, to be treated in a psychiatric ward for a nervous breakdown - he has become a "nut" himself.

"Cured of a nervous breakdown but without a job, he leaves the hospital to start life anew." The doctor offers some last-minute advice: "Take it easy and avoid excitement." The Tramp, now wearing his familiar outfit, joins a large number of people who are unemployed, since the economy is depressed, and factories are closed. On the street, he obligingly picks up and waves a red warning flag that has fallen off a passing construction truck. Again, his small personal action has greater consequences than expected - he is mistaken for the rally leader of a flag-waving demonstration of Communist agitators who have just rounded the corner behind him. In the comedy of errors, he is promptly arrested by club-wielding police and hauled off to jail in a police patrol wagon.

Out on the streets, a gamin (Paulette Goddard), a young orphaned girl, is "a child of the waterfront, who refuses to go hungry." In her first appearance in the film, the poor gamin steals a bunch of bananas from a case on board a freighter, and shares them with other waterfront kids on the dock. She returns home to support her family - she shares her food with her motherless, hungry younger sisters and her unemployed father.

"Held as a communist leader, our innocent victim languishes in jail." In prison, he meets his brutish cellmate. During a jailhouse lunch, a drug squad is "searching for smuggled 'nose-powder.'" Knowing he might be caught, another drug addict inmate stores his "snow"/cocaine in a salt shaker in the mess hall during a raid. In the lunch room, the Tramp liberally applies salt to his food, inadvertently taking a massive dose of the "joy powder." Out of step (literally and figuratively) with everyone else on his way back from the prison dining room to his cell in the regimented line of marching convicts, he spins and pirouettes, takes a wrong turn, and gets lost. When he eventually finds his way back to the cell corridor, he walks into a jailbreak in progress. With superhuman strength and fearlessness derived from the powder, he dodges gun fire and unwittingly averts the attempted jailbreak. He knocks out the escaping convicts and releases the guards that have been locked in a cell - to save the day.

"While outside there is trouble with the unemployed." Hearing a gun shot in the streets, the gamin finds that her father has been tragically killed in a riot. "The law takes charge of the orphans." Juvenile child-care authorities break up the gamin's family after her father's death. They snatch her younger sisters away to take them to the "proper" authorities, but she escapes.

"Happy in his comfortable cell," prison officials reward the Tramp with his own private jail cell. He is enjoying all the modern comforts of home - reading a newspaper announcing "STRIKES AND RIOTS," when he is abruptly summoned by the sheriff. While waiting in the prison office, "the minister and his wife pay their weekly visit." Sharing tea with the very proper woman while the minister attends to his duties, the Tramp experiences embarrassing gurgling noises. Later, the sheriff grants him his freedom with a pardon, although the Tramp is fearful of the outside, frightening world (of economic difficulty) and requests: "Can't I stay a little longer? I'm so happy here."

Back on the street, the Tramp uses an enthusiastic letter of recommendation from the sheriff, calling him "an honest and trustworthy man," to get work in a shipyard. After being accepted, the foreman orders him to find a large wedge - with a sledgehammer, he removes the one from beneath the hull of a ship that is being built in dry-dock. He accidently and prematurely "launches" it down a slide into the harbor, successfully sinking a half-finished ship. The Tramp promptly leaves, knowing that he will be fired anyway.

He is "determined to go back to jail." "Alone and hungry," he finds that life outside prison is fraught with perils. So he tries - vainly - to get arrested again. He attempts to take the blame when the gamin, on the run from child-care and police authorities, knocks into him as she is trying to flee after grabbing a loaf of bread from a baker's van for her hungry siblings. He tells the baker and the policeman: "No, she didn't - I did." But the ploy doesn't work when a female witness testifies: "It was the girl - not the man." And the gamin is arrested.

The Tramp tries another strategy to get arrested. He enters a cafeteria and orders a large meal that he obviously cannot pay for. He enjoys the meal, and then announces that he is unable to pay the tab to the person at the cash register. He has alerted a policeman to be present. As he is being arrested, he also "purchases" some cigars from a cigar stand outside. This time, he is successful and is jailed for both offenses. On the way to the lockup in the same paddy wagon, he and the gamin meet. He asks her: "Remember me - and the bread?" The perfect gentleman, he offers her his handkerchief for her tears. They both seize a chance to escape when a fortuitous swerve to avoid an accident occurs and they fall out the back. "Now is your chance to escape!" he encourages. Rather than go to jail, he decides to follow the gamin and they both reach the outskirts of the city.

As they sit and flirt on a curb in a residential community, she tells him that she lives "no place - anywhere." They notice a suburban couple parting outside their home, and the Tramp asks:

Can you imagine us in a little home like that?

They enter into an idealized dream sequence, dreaming of everyday life - it is an Everyman vision of the perfect home in a capitalistic society. They collectively imagine, through a dissolve, their happy life together in a bright cheery home. He plucks an orange from a nearby tree just outside the window. Grapes are visible beyond the kitchen door, easily plucked. An obliging cow is quickly summoned outside the kitchen door, always available for fresh milk. And a steak is cooking on the stove. The Tramp is inspired to promise: "I'll do it! We'll get a home, even if I have to work for it." They are brought back to the rough reality of their situation when a policeman motions them to move along.

Later, he applies for a job as a night watchman in a department store, to replace the present watchman who has had an accident and broken his leg. The manager is told: "Give him the job and show him his duties" after he has presented his sheriff's letter of recommendation. The Tramp sneaks the shivering and cold gamin into the back entrance of the store. They stock up with sandwiches and cake from the food counter. On the Fourth Floor, the Toy Department, to amuse her, the Tramp performs a risky, blind-folded rollerskating act. He brags: "Look! I can do it blindfolded!" He skates circles nearer and nearer to the edge of a balcony with a missing railing. On the Fifth Floor, in the Bedroom Display, the Tramp warms her with a white fur coat and tucks her safely into one of the store's luxurious beds. As he must go around the store and punch the time clocks, he promises: "Now go to sleep and I'll wake you up before the store opens."

Then while on his rounds, wearing roller-skates, the Tramp stumbles into a gang of burglars (Stanley Sandford, Hank Mann, and Louis Natheux). They order him: "Stay where you are!!!" but he finds that impossible on a moving escalator. One of the burglars, Big Bill, "recognizes a fellow-worker from the steel mills." Realizing their common circumstances, they tell him: "We ain't burglars - we're hungry." They indulge themselves in the food department. "The next morning," the gamin wakes up by herself and rushes out of the store. At 9:30, after the store has reopened and the Tramp awakens on top of the counter in the women's apparel department, where he has been discovered by a store clerk and a customer. He is taken away by police in a police patrol wagon and finds himself in jail once again. "Ten days later," he is released and the gamin is there to greet him. She is overjoyed to see him, and smiles: "I've got a surprise for you. I've found a home."

He follows the gamin to a run-down, dilapidated lakeside shack where he gives the home a name: "It's Paradise." The ramshackle cabin provides a few visual gags - a beam falls on the Tramp's head when he shuts the door behind him, and a table collapses when he leans on it. Propping up sagging roof beams, the gamin says: "Of course it's no Buckingham Palace." He falls into the lake behind the shack when he leans on the back door. He sleeps outside in the doghouse for the night and the next morning attempts swimming, diving head first into two feet of water. There, they set up a home. As his relationship evolves with the resilient, homeless gamin, he establishes a friendly, protective and loving relationship with her.

Entering the shack for a fine breakfast she has prepared, the front door beam swings into his head again, and his dining table chair sinks into the rotten floorboards. Their meal consists of large pieces of uncut bread and open tin cans of liquid. He opens the Daily News and sees the headlines that his old factory is reopening and rehiring: "FACTORIES REOPEN! MEN TO BE PUT TO WORK AT THE JETSON MILLS THIS MORNING." Above the newspaper's banner, a title reads: Prosperity Has Turned the Corner. He jumps up suddenly, fetches his derby hat, and points toward the door: "Work at last!" He promises: "Now we'll get a real home!" He can hardly contain himself as he eagerly runs off to the factory. The gamin waves goodbye expectantly.

Upon reaching the factory, he must push his way through hundreds of other workers in the crowd seeking employment. He is the last one to sneak through the gate to be offered a job. He becomes the mechanic's (Chester Conklin) assistant: "The mechanic and his new assistant put to work repairing the long idle machinery." With a large oil can and tool box, they begin to tackle the problem. In a comedic sequence, the oil can and the mechanic's coat (and a pocket watch in the coat pocket) are pressed flat. The mechanic is understandably upset: "My family heirloom ruined!"

They try to set the huge machine in motion. They climb up onto the massive machine, succeeding in crushing the tool box between two large rotating gears, after which it spits out tools like it was suffering from indigestion. Then the machine malfunctions, catching his boss in the cogs of the machine. The boss passes through the entire transport system, and emerges at various points in the wheels. The mechanic cries to his assistant: "Get me out of here!" The boss shouts more directions: "Pull that lever" and "Hold it!!", trying to extricate himself from being stuck in the gears and sprockets.

When the lunch break whistle sounds, the Tramp attempts to serve lunch to his half-swallowed boss - almost impossible since the boss's head is the only body part sticking out of the machine. Ingenuously, the Tramp uses a funnel to direct coffee from a thermos into his mouth. A whole roasted chicken and a piece of pie are somewhat more difficult. After lunch, the workers go on strike, which puts the Tramp out of work and back on the streets where police prohibit gathering of workers. The Tramp is pushed around for loitering, and then accidentally steps onto a board that propels a brick into the head of a policeman. He is severely beaten and off to jail yet again.

Meanwhile, one week later, the gamin dances joyfully on the street outside the Red Moon Cafe known for having singing waiters. In her impromptu audition, she is recognized by the owner: "She'd be good for the cafe." She is offered a job dancing in the little cabaret - in a quick dissolve, she is transformed from a rag-wearing gamin to a fancy-costumed cafe dancer. Upon his release from jail one week later, a transformed gamin awaits and hugs him cheerfully and he immediately notices the changes in her appearance. She tells him that she has obtained a job for him. In the cafe, she assures the management that he would be a good employee. The owner asks: "Can you wait on table?" and "Can you sing?" She answers for the Tramp, promising that he can. The owner agrees to offer a trial job: "All right. I'll give you a trial."

But juvenile authorities have other ideas. Because she has escaped from juvenile officers, the County Juvenile Division issues a WANTED for vagrancy notice for the gamin.

In the classic restaurant sequence, while waiting on the customers that night, his leg is caught up a dog leash while carrying a loaded tray. In the kitchen, he drills holes in a big block of cheese to make swiss cheese. An irate customer complains about the service: "I've been waiting an hour for roast duck." The maitre d' reprimands the Tramp for his deficient waiting on tables. Upset, the inexperienced Tramp enters the OUT door of the kitchen instead of the IN door, knocking over a co-worker carrying a huge tray. While delivering a large tray of roast duck held high in the air, he is swept away by a crowd of dancers. The roast duck gets stuck in the chandelier, is finally retrieved and brought to the customer's table, but then becomes a rugby football in a game with drunken guests.

The owner realizes he has failed as a waiter, but gives him one last chance: "I hope you can sing." His appearance is preceded by that of four singing waiters. The gamin assists him in preparation - "Let's rehearse your song," she tells him. After a few false practice trials, he realizes: "I forget the words." So she suggests scribbling the words down on one of his loose cuffs so he can remember them.

a pretty girl and a gay old man
flirted on the boulevard
he was a fat old thing
but his diamond ring
caught her eye as...

The practice goes perfectly, and he confidently strolls out to the center of the cafe floor for his premiere as a singing waiter. A dramatic introductory dance and gesture with his arms sends both cuffs flying. So he must stall, and stall, and then improvise. From the dressing room door, the gamin shouts: "Sing!! Never mind the words." He makes up nonsense gibberish full of foreign-sounding phrases in a double-talk song rendition to the tune of Titana, the Cuff Song. (This was the first - and last time - the Tramp's voice was ever heard in a film - and it clearly makes the Tramp's point that words aren't as important as actions.)

...La spinach or la busho, Cigaretto toto bello, Ce rakish spagoletto, Ce le tu la tu la trois! Senora fila scena, voulez-vous la taximeter, Le jaunta sur la seata, Je le tu le tu le waaah!...

His future as a singing waiter seems bright, and he is brought out for an encore. The owner is pleased: "You're great! I'll give you a steady job." But his triumph is brief. Orphanage/juvenile officials show up in the club to take the gamin away as an escaped vagrant. The Tramp grabs her and they run away, tossing chairs into the path of their pursuers. The two of them successfully escape.

The film ends with a classic set of sequences. At dawn the next day, they are sitting at the side of a country road. He is fanning his bare feet before putting on his shoes. She has all her worldly possessions in a tied-up ball. She cries and complains to him:

Gamin: What's the use of trying?
The Tramp: Buck up - never say die. We'll get along!

He encourages her to have fortitude and shows her how to put a smile on her face.

In the final, most memorable image, they are seen optimistically walking arm in arm into the sunrise before a hilly horizon. Rather than departing alone (as in so many other, ever-optimistic walks by the Tramp in farewell scenes), he is silhouetted with his love against the background, walking down the dusty road toward the future for the last time.