Modern Times

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Modern Times

Charles Chaplin
United States, 1936

Recommended for ages 8 & up

featuring

Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Chester Conklin, Henry Bergman,

It starts with an overhead shot of sheep and cuts to the throngs coming out of a subway station. Was Charlie Chaplin a Surrealist, or just a realist? His version of modern times looks forward in equal measure to Jacques Tati and 1984. This “silent” is full of modern sounds, heard over loudspeakers and big corporate television screens (not to mention the Tramp’s outburst of French-inspired gibberish). Charlie, the ever-elegant Tramp, is an industrial swashbuckler with an oilcan for a sword, but he’s begun taking on the characteristics of factory machines, obsessively twisting buttons no matter where they are.

Judy Bloch

FILM DETAILS

Screenwriter

  • Charles Chaplin

Cinematographer

  • Roland Totheroh
  • Ira Morgan

Language

  • Silent
  • with music track, sound effects, and occasional dialogue

Print Info

  • B&W
  • DCP
  • 87 mins

Source

  • Janus Films

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