Oh multitudes of ironically ironic ironies! The final silent film made in the silent film era is called Modern Times. And that titular dichotomy is no accident.
Charlie Chaplin persisted in his refusal to kowtow to the overwhelmingly popular “fad” of talking pictures, with their vulgar verbiage, for if anything would destroy the Tramp (synonymous with Chaplin himself), it’s sesquipedalian loquaciousness. To release a silent picture in 1936 is a work of dog headed ludditism, but surely Chaplin knew that time was coming to an end for his Little Tramp. The Tramp’s so-called franchise was dated, not for a loss of popularity or quality or inspiration or proliferation (all these things it excelled at – quite possibly among the most triumphant film franchises ever), but by technology itself! Thus Modern Times doesn’t simply stand as a final farewell to the Tramp, but to an entire form of filmmaking he represented.
With technology (sound technology) making the Tramp obsolete, Chaplin chooses for the theme of his little guy’s final outing technology itself. Though have no doubt that with the Great Depression still in full swing, the Tramp’s position as the silent spokesman for an entire class of underprivileged makes him as potent as ever. But once again, as with City Lights, the march of time changes the nature of poverty right underneath the Tramp’s comically oversized shoes. No more bindles and apple cores, like some John Schwartzwelder script. Progress has come for our Little Tramp, and with it industrialization, atomization, and the dehumanization that implies.
Modern Times thus opens in a lovingly designed Art Deco factory floor, all oversized steel gears and degraded laborers performing repetitive tasks upon the assembly line. Oh, and the Tramp’s there too, working the assembly line like Donald Duck and Lucy Ricardo would do after him. As always with Chaplin’s films, the humor comes directly from the Tramp himself, an alien creature in a more recognizably human world, acting in ways humorously divergent from proper behavior. An abstract grotesque like the Tramp is a good way to engender yuks, but it’s pretty hard to critique an entire system of production with such a tool. (That’s what she said!)
Make no mistake, Chaplin intends a Grand Sweeping Statement with Modern Times, his most overtly political film yet – until he’d take on ze Nazis. It’s kinda hard to miss Chaplin’s point about the drudgery of the capitalist industrial complex when the movie opens by juxtaposing sheep with factory laborers. I suppose at one point that was a clever comparison, and not a fallback for internet trolls. And while some of Chaplin’s past efforts have begged us to consider his politics, it’s practically impossible not to now. Okay…Chaplin was a leftist. To ask the FBI, he was a Communist. He is undoubtedly critical of capitalism, for all the inhumane worker conditions and whatnot. Former filmic efforts have dramatized the plight of the poor, but at last, by directly addressing the system, Chaplin discovers satire, and can have an impact – not with sympathetic, humanist portrayals of the poor, but with specific criticisms of the Robbers Baron (or is that Robber Barons?).
All this places Modern Times squarely in a realm of propaganda…sort of. The image of the Tramp and his coworkers struggling against anti-human forms of machinery recalls many a Soviet effort. Metropolis, a similarly minded German Expressionist masterwork, presents similar imagery. There’s possibly a bit of Dziga Vertov in here too, but with the irony that Chaplin cannot celebrate his adopted nation’s (that’d be the U.S.) technical might, because he is somewhat ideologically opposed to it. I feel this is becoming an ugly summary.
One of Chaplin’s most potent filmic techniques for condemning technology (oh the ironies in that statement!) is quite perfect for his chosen format: the use of dialogue. Say wha?!?! In a silent film?!?! Oh yeah, Modern Times one ups City Lights as a pseudo-silent, building on that film’s synchronized soundtrack by adding in actual chatter...but with a point. The only comprehensible verbiage is spoken through machines, be it via telephone or recordings or oddly retro-futurist tell-o-visual-matic device machineries (i.e. TVs). Genuine human discussion is still rendered, when needed, through title cards. This is a clever means, very in keeping with City Lights, to disregard sound film, even if there’s no particular persuasiveness to this argument.
The Tramp’s time on the factory floor is, while politically loaded, comedic gold – a wholly realized combination of setting and gags and Chaplin’s celebrated pantomime. It climaxes as the Tramp is sucked down into the machine’s innards, made so insane by his repetitive job that he can no longer physically control himself (note the over-your-head message).
This image somewhat recalls Buster Keaton’s great moment of despair in The General, when he is carried away unawares on a train’s spinning rod. Man against machine was always Keaton’s favorite theme, with the whole world presented as a mathematical device pitted against the hero – who could only overcome through technical superiority. Keaton’s comedy is deadpan and relatively rigid, most unlike Chaplin’s fluid, often overacted cartoonish lunacy. Thus pitting Chaplin against a gewgaw yields a very different end result, one focused upon his outsized physical gyrations – Chaplin becomes a part of the machine, and retains those traits upon leaving the factory, while Keaton makes the machine a part of himself.
At this point, Modern Times would make for a fantastic short film, with the Tramp’s time in the factory almost exactly two reels long. The movie has peaked, with still an hour to go and nothing nearly so pointed to do with it.
Unemployed and out on the streets, the Tramp reverts to his usual hobo ways. Much of that sleek set design, so striking against the Tramp’s old-fashioned frame, gives way for a more blandly realistic look at industrial slums – like something from the Italian neo-realist school. There are social problems to explore, like picketing and riots – resulting in the Tramp leading a Communist parade. While this is potentially an honest mistake, one can kind of see where the FBI’s suspicions arose. The Tramp is tossed into prison, where a new set of comic set pieces can arise to no ultimate end (be it narrative or thematic), and so on.
The rest of Modern Times is a largely disparate collection of comic moments, some of them notably stronger than others – with only a rather light basting of industry and “modern” technology to connect them. (A frankly stronger version of the same notion can be found in Jacques Tati’s Play Time.) Narrative fragmentation is a common feature of Chaplin’s, er, features, owing to his sporadic and improvisatory means of working (also his peculiar perfectionism). Somehow this episodic construction feels more damning in Modern Times, which doesn’t have as strong of an emotional through-line as some of Chaplin’s more overtly melodramatic works. It’s simply assorted random settings:
- The department store
- The shack
- The dance hall
- The prison
- The docks
- The suburbs
- A brief return to the factory
There is a larger connective tissue than simply assorted misadventures. Any guesses as to what that will be? Yup, a Girl. Specifically, a Gamine, which is (I suppose) a rather more specific generic appellation – “gamine” meaning a female hobo, but somehow also meaning what Audrey Hepburn once was, which is a difficult thing to reconcile. As usual, Chaplin casts his…er, let’s say “girlfriend,” because it’s unclear whether he was ever actually married to Paulette Goddard, unless a legally questionable and possibly apocryphal ceremony in China counts. Anyway, Paulette Goddard plays the leading lady, and I must say, she is easily the best gal in a Chaplin picture!
Goddard’s Gamine is a feisty young woman, self-dependent as she steals bread for herself and her fellow hungry wharf rats. Her poverty rivals – nay, exceeds – that of the Tramp’s in any picture, possibly because it comes across as infinitely more realistic. The Gamine is a thoroughly believable person, and thankfully separate from the standard silent film tactic of wilting violet female leads. The Gamine is anything but naïve, and makes a remarkably strong impression in her introduction, an extended dramatic sequence of survival entirely removed from the Tramp’s tomfoolery. Though Chaplin the director does insert some rather cloying melodrama into this section, Goddard nicely sells it.
It helps that Goddard seems, visually, quite out of place in a silent feature – or really any film from its period. Her facial structure, hair and expressions all seem – to excuse the obvious word – modern. There is nothing of the twenties’ doe-eyed waifs in her appearance, no period signifiers of attractiveness – nor does Goddard overplay her beauty. Covered in oil and rags, with sneaky little sideways glances throughout, she rather acts against her beauty, which comes across through a rambunctious energy instead.
It is inevitable that she shall share a romance with the Tramp, though it’s surprising just how equal that romance is. Both are of the same class, put there by social conditions. They are on a surprisingly equal footing in every sense, so Modern Times completely skips any “getting to know you” period (which Chaplin’s films often don’t move beyond). Tramp and the Gamine are a couple from the outset. A lot of the set pieces that follow are then centered upon their domestic life, be it in poverty, in fantasy, or hidden in the department store.
This is Chaplin telling a domestic comedy, in a sense, though marriage is never broached (from what I can tell). That’s a surprising scenario for a silent comedy to take, simply because it feels out of place with the format’s usual regard for “boy meets girl” stories. Take it as a sign of maturity, or of changing times, but there’s a lot in Modern Times which feels out of place in silent cinema – sleek design, Goddard’s timeless appearance, suburban domesticity…cocaine (which would feel out of place in any movie prior to the 1960s, and results in the Tramp’s same basic untempered zaniness). Domesticity is the most interesting element, because there are daydream moments where the Tramp and the Gamine basically picture themselves on the set of a 1950s sitcom. How anachronistic! Obviously a spotlessly clean scene out of “Leave It to Beaver” was conceivable in the ‘30s, in order for Chaplin to parody it. Still, this mode of comedy is light-years separated from the dusty, earthy stunt work most associated with the era.
Yes, a lot of Modern Times is atypical, and while there is no doubt as to its classic status, it is difficult at times to square away with Chaplin’s main body of work (best exemplified by City Lights). Since this is meant as the Tramp’s final farewell, it pushes him to the apocalyptic limits – cocaine, the 1950s predicted, breadline riots, all material that is utterly alien to the Tramp, and perhaps an argument for his departure. How does Chaplin end such a statement?
Well, the climax comes first – in Chaplin’s work, often a bravura stunt sequence. Modern Times, true to its form, goes an idiosyncratic route instead…
THE TRAMP VOCALIZES!
Worry not, he doesn’t speak (which would violate Chaplin’s conception of the little guy), but he’s called upon to perform a song at the club he and the Gamine now work. As a fun little meta joke that wouldn’t be possible without a career of silence behind him, Chaplin milks the moments leading up to the Tramp’s singing for all they’re worth. And…the Tramp sings “The Nonsense Song,” filled with verbiage in the same sense that a James Joyce novel is filled with things that some would call words. Gibberish, in other words. Literally off the cuff, where the smeared lyrics are written. This retains the illusion of the Tramp’s verbal “otherness,” and creates a moment the character cold never improve upon.
The final shot provides closure for the entirety of the Tramp’s adventures. The classical ending sees the Tramp walking alone down the road – “The Lonely Man” from “The Incredible Hulk” optional. Only this time the Tramp is joined by the Gamine, his female counterpart – each abandoned by the ever-evolving nature of progress, but complete together. The Tramp has gotten the girl before, in The Gold Rush and assorted shorts, but this has a greater air of permanence. This is the Tramp still as the Tramp, not transformed by narrative circumstances into someone else.
As a postscript, Modern Times by no means signaled the end of Chaplin’s career, though it would be the last time he would appear as the Tramp. The distinction is somewhat academic, because in The Great Dictator Chaplin appears in two roles with arguable Tramp-like tendencies – as a Jewish barber, and as an ersatz Hitler. (Charlie Chaplin : Adolf Hitler :: Tina Fey : Sarah Palin) The Great Dictator, openly critical of Nazi Germany before it was cool, is a talkie, with a specific plot the Tramp simply does not fit into. For these reasons, it is not a part of the Tramp “continuity” – the Tramp’s essential pantomime is gone, even if Chaplin’s barber retains the Tramp’s visual appearance. Chaplin morphed his Tramp into new characters, evolved him beyond his very Trampiness. It isn’t a clean break, as The Great Dictator is still dependent upon memories of the Tramp, but it is fundamentally different.
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