Charlie Chaplain: Modern Times - Just 1 to go now...

As part of my ongoing project to have seen all 50 films in the IMDB top 50, I last night watched Charlie Chaplain's classic silent film Modern Times.  This is a film that was made in 1936, using mostly silent techniques in an era when the silent movie industry was already dead in the water.  Chaplain of course was an actor and writer who helped define the silent era, and so it would make sense to think of him being most resistant to change.  However as we shall see, rather than being a floundering throw-back at the end of a dying era, Modern Times in fact makes clever use of both silent and audio techniques to tell a moving and funny story.

Before we get going on this though, time to put my cards on the table - I have never seen a Charlie Chaplain film before.  This is some of the reason why it has taken me so long to get around to finishing off the IMDB top 50 - only the Chaplain films remain.  I have to say though that I was completely taken aback by how much pure entertainment there is in Modern Times.  It's a genuinely funny physical comedy, with slapstick and cabaret-style routines.  It's also politically significant.  Set in depression-era USA, the film tells the story of The Tramp (Chaplain's archetypal every-man character) and how he loses his job doing back-breaking repetitive work on a production line.  He then gets unwillingly caught up in industrial action and thrown in jail for being a ring-leader.  Upon realising that jail might be easier than getting on in the modern industrialised world, The Tramp then embarks on a series of attempts to get work that inevitably end up with him back behind bars, whilst at the same time trying to save the soul of a young vagrant woman living rough on the streets.

There are so many good things about this film.  The sets are awesome, especially those huge machines in the factory.  The physical comedy is genuinely funny and the way it is captured on screen is impressive.  The part at the start where The Tramp gets pulled through a system of cogs must have actually been done by Chaplain squeezing through a set of moving wheels, plus Chaplain's gibberish song at the end highlights what a great physical performer he was.  The use of low frame rates speeded up for modern projection emphasises the slapstick of what's going on.  The use of sound in the film is historically significant and works as a thematic device too, in that sound is only used by machines, screens, people in power and only by The Tramp when he can't be understood.  It confirms the theme of alienation, and that normal people feel isolated from the wonders of industry and fast pace of the modern age.

As if this wasn't enough, then there's film history to enjoy.  There's a moment when a ship is launched to sea, an effect that was created by what looks like the projection of a launching ship on a screen behind Chaplain - a laughable effect in the modern age of course, but it's just a crude version of what they do with green screens.  This is also generally considered to be the last film of the silent era, meaning that Charlie Chaplain got the last word on a mode of cinema he was instrumental in defining.  Overall it's enjoyable on just about every level possible, a real joy to watch.

With this under my belt, I only have Chaplain's City Lights to go in order to round out the IMDB top 50.  It'll be top 100 next...