Mr. Wong, No. 5 - Doomed to Die (1940)

Staring down the prospect of writing and blogging about Doomed to Die, I fear the same sort of apathy which shattered my meager efforts to opine on the former Fatal Hour. There are a few facts (that is to say, one single fact) to pique interest: Though not quite the last in the series (there’s one more), this is Boris Karloff’s final outing as the plot-resolving Mr. James Lee Wong – a Wong swan song. I wish that filled me with some emotion, any emotion, but it’s surprising just how neutral Karloff has been as the titular detective. I don’t know what to attribute that to, the films’ strident and unusual effort to avoid racism, Monogram’s one-take refusal to ever make a movie remotely beyond barely adequate, or simply an apathy on Karloff’s part which rivals my own. The fact is that here he is at his end, with a far awesomer career surrounding him on all sides…Hell, maybe it was just contracts keeping Karloff around for as many lackluster entries as he did.

So, in light of the challenge which Doomed to Die poses to my icy soul, I shall “live blog it,” as it were, and let my initial reactions form what ultimately makes its way online – An old fallback of mine, when inspiration fails, and something I almost always hate doing (last use: Disaster Movie).

First, let us ignore the opening titles, which reveal nothing, and revel in uncharacteristically stereotypical “Oriental” music. La la la la la…

Okay, movie’s on! Stock footage of a ship segues to stock footage of newspapers flying at us (a common aviation hazard in 1940) to warn of a ship-borne inferno. For a bit of exposition, this is clever enough, even leaning upon Monogram’s loony love of midgets.

Now offices, set-bound boredom replacing stock footage zaniness. The movie’s too quick for me, rushing through three character intros (complete with back story, role, personality, everything, so they never need bother with it again), all in the time it takes me to type up “three.” Let’s see, there’s an attorney Victor Martin (Henry Brandon), the besuitedly bland Matthews (Wilbur Mack), and Wentworth (Melvin Lang), the grand poobah of the bunch – who is the likeliest party for first act murder.


The movie continues to unspool speedily, but sans interest, as I take the time needed to take screen caps…As we learn that Wentworth, apart from being a businessman with a murder-baiting will, also has an inevitable-love-interest daughter Cynthia (Catherine Craig). There’s some exposition which hints, obliquely, at the Manhattan Project – surely Monogram’s typewriter simians didn’t know of this by ’40, but this prediction reflects the increasing wartime concern of the era.

Now a similarly suited Cyrus is here (Melvin Lang), to brag with Wentworth about the shipping business – I recall my habit of exceptional wordiness when keyboard-narrating movies, so it’s time to slow down a bit, maybe read a few online articles while doing this too. [Dur de dur…] Oh, here’s Ted! – And by “Ted” I mean “Dick,” because old movies have muddled dialogue often. Dick is either Wentworth’s son-in-law, or his actual son, and I hope it’s the former, because he’s actively seeking Cynthia’s hand in marriage – yup, there’s the standard Young Lover Couple right there – Where’s Wong?! I demand death!

Okay, this is how these mysteries go: Basically every suspect is mad at every other, specifically mad at Wentworth, who’s gone and – No, wait, Cyrus is the murder victim! That’s a surprise! (Small miracles.) “He’s dead.” Dialogue!


Cynthia’s introduction occurs alongside the return of recurring character “Bobbie” Johnson (Marjorie Reynolds), the damn best thing about these movies – channeling just the slightest hint of screwball energy into these more anemic mysteries. And – that scene didn’t last long. I fear this’ll be the way with Bobbie.

Crime scene, now it’s Bill Street’s (Grant Withers) reintroduction, he the series’ secret main character – more than ever now in this epic example of Wonglessness. Street oversees the investigation with his characteristic incompetence, habitually selecting the male half of the Young Lover Couple as el suspecto numero uno – thus Dick is arrested in a random, stylish unrelated scene.

At the station, Street plays with his shackled Dick, trying to agitate Dick so that Dick might spit forth information. Bobbie is there. Wow, there is nothing of note so far, I’d have nothing to say without this stream-of-consciousness approach to lean upon – only Wong’s continued nonexistence is worth noting, but the character is enough of a blank slate for it to not even matter. Nearly twenty minutes in… (Of 67.)

No wait, here is Wong!


I guess it’s a good thing Wong arrived when he did, because the plot was spiraling helplessly out of control – Wong insists that opening stock footage ship indeed had some pertinence. Furthermore, a few of the poor drowned souls aboard it were Chinese, which in this franchise is always a functional substitute for a genuine clue.

Chineseness being enough, Wong is off to Chinatown, a bi-entry sojourn, owing to Monogram’s limited sets – such as the same apothecary store and tong hideout (though as a sequel, set repetition is excusable, as it is the same setting). Tongs and Wong review potential leads, what with secret missions and whatnot and – Okay, I’m hungry! Time to let the movie unspool in silence while I go and procure some microwaveable taquitos…

…

While those delicious morsels cook up, nothing new to report on the movie end. Tongs prong Wong – with violence – leading to a stock footage car chase and – My food is ready!

…

There’s actual gunfire and blood and crashing cars all about, which is rather closer to the late ‘40s Monogram I’m more familiar with. I – [eat eat eat!] – appreciate this approach, this is nonsensical, but is something Monogram can do to overcome the shallow characters, the inconsequential plot, the general disposability. And with that scant uptick in energy, Karloff actually gets a subtle laugh line – something closer to the Karloff one pictures headlining a detective series.

A scene away from Wong, Street or Bobbie, back to Wentworth’s scheming (concerning Cyrus’ presumed suicide, which hasn’t really been stated clearly yet). This isn’t worth commenting upon. [Eat eat eat!]

Eventually our central trio barges upon the scene, to trade further expository info. Surprise surprise, even in this writing approach, I find I cannot commit to actually listening to this mess. I do not care about how Dick relates to Wentworth and the rest, this being the sort of narrative complexity which is hard to present cinematically – an ongoing struggle of period mysteries. Arghh! There’s some effort at using Dick’s obvious innocence to draw us along emotionally, but he is just a tool for pure technical exposition, the same as everybody else.


[Extended pause to fend off a phone call from my bored friend in Wisconsin.]

Okay, it’s a challenge now to regain grounding in the film, so I’ll just dig out on the noir-tinged cinematography – possibly just an accident of cheap resources and B&W film. It’s still moody and effective, especially since a no doubt soon-to-die cat burglar is being stalked up a fire escape by – is that Wong? Yup. Man has a habit of entering buildings via unusual entries – in this case, a tenth-storey window. It’s something, characterization-wise. Yeah, these silent bits of proto-noir, divorced of earth-bound plots, are the best parts of mysteries – that is, when they aren’t being character comedies.

Street enters, pistol a-blazin’, and scares off the burglar without a single fatality. Things calmed down, I retire to heat up some more snacks…

Thankfully, Doomed to Die switches out inky black suspense for more traded comic barbs, courtesy of Bobbie. Food’s ready!


At some point – it goes to show my continued inattention that I cannot say when – Wentworth was killed, fulfilling the needed secondary death. What with a will and all, he really was doomed. [Eat eat eat!] Wong now begins his clever scheming in anticipation of the climax (some 20 minutes away), demanding infrared film – seeing as it’s 1940, this demands a pause for the Crime Lab™ guys to explain to Bobbie (women – sheesh) just what infrared film is, and why we should use it to exterminate the Nazis. Naturally, a lengthy development scene follows, to further ground this new technology. Thankfully, the Bobbie/Street love-hate relationship fuels this scene with humor. Wong remains mostly tiresome.

Down to the docks, to another shadowy Monogram set – Docks, for that automatic injection of atmosphere (unpictured)! The plot reasoning for this – to follow up on a new name on the ship’s manifest, but if you couldn’t tell, I’m beyond trying with this story. Wong, Street and Bobbie all separately creep around dark corridors, in a manner Ed Wood, Jr. would refer to as “lurking.” Bobbie sees something off screen, screams girlishly, and I suppose I can forgive this lapse into female ‘40s stereotyping, seeing as Bobbie is usually totally adverse to such shenanigans. And it reveals the occasional (but not set-in-stone) third corpse, identity yet unknown. (Future edit: It’s Tie Ling, the Asian guy they’ve come down to check up on.)


The creeping scene continues; in fact, the characters’ comic interplay mixes with it, yielding quite possibly the most engaging single sequence yet for Wong & Co. Perhaps energized by these more overtly horrific qualities, Karloff even tosses a little light ham-acting into his Wong – trilled recitations on Chinese artifact history. Things are exciting enough, I’ve even forgotten all about my taquitos. [Eat eat eat!]

And…another fat, style-free exposition scene in the police station. Doomed to Die has been operating at such a relatively elevated level for long enough, some downtime is earned. Time to debate the implications of the latest clues found, as I tune out. I similarly ignore Bobbie’s misconstruing of hari kari as “harry harry.” Odd how everyone (sans Wong, natch) keeps insisting upon suicide for each death, even while the latest dude was stabbed in the back. (Some of this is self-aware, and thus lightly humorous.)

Exposition scene. Ignored. All in service of stiffening Dick’s and Cynthia’s lovey-doveyness.


Time remains only for a climax. For whatever reason, Doomed to Die errs as it did at the start by refocusing upon a house of tiresome suspects. Among them is a larger old man I’ve probably confused with Wentworth throughout the picture, because I only now become aware of him – Paul Fleming (Guy Usher). And…he’s dead, shot, murdered, and someone’s responsible. (Here is a fault in this “immediate response” approach, because the instant I finish that sentence, it turns out Paul isn’t dead, but oh well.)

All this gets Wong, Street, Bobbie, all the people we care about – it gets them assembled with the rest. It plays according to clockwork: Wong makes a surprise allegation so Street can arrest the proper villain, and I’m too ethical as a blogger (and also I’m not paying enough attention) to reveal that shock ending to you. And though this finale isn’t terribly functional, it is a virtue of older movies that they know to quit before things get worse – the movie ended something like a minute ago, in typing time.

In conclusion (what creative writing!), Doomed to Die surprises me more than anyone by being halfway entertaining. Maybe it’s a result of this type-as-I-go approach, but I think it’s something as simple as an increase of stylish ‘40s cinematography. Repeatedly, these forgotten old B-movies excel at visuals, and flounder with narrative – which separate nicely. One recalls Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, which was praised by some of his contemporaries solely for its surreal visuals. The plot is decent, and works, but is mostly frivolous. Doomed to Die works in a similar, but much humbler, level. That is all.

Mr. Wong, No. 6 - Phantom of Chinatown (1940)

Losing the lead actor isn’t necessarily the death knell for a franchise. But with Boris Karloff’s departure from the Mr. Wong series, there was no more need for Wongs – not that Karloff particularly brought anything to the series, except his mere presence. Oddly, Karloff proved the universe wrong and found a role he could be boring in, but that name on the marquee was enough to fuel five movies entirely on its own. With Karloff off, there is now no reason for Monogram to wring Wongs for long – to say nothing that the Wong “creative” team (director: William Nigh, writer: some guys). So, freed from the expectation that the final Wong is anything but a one-off, new director Phil Rosen (familiar from many an East Side Kids film, notably Spooks Run Wild) does something wholly unprecedented for a series about an Asian detective:

He hires an Asian actor!

Between the sixty-one shared films of Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto and Mr. Wong (the curiously prolific “Chinese detective” sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-subgenre of mystery movies), only one film goes beyond the white race when casting its hero, and that’d be this movie, the final Wong – Phantom of Chinatown. Amazing to think that there was a time in Hollywood when slapping some yellowface and falsely slanty eyes on a Caucasian was the preferable alternative to providing minority actors with employment…which goes to show how progressive the overall Mr. Wong series has been to simply respect its Mr. Wong character, and not characterize him as an archaic and unsubtle stereotype. And when you’re casting a legitimate Asian lead in 1940 Hollywood, there is literally only one name on that list: Keye Luke


Keye Luke kicks ass! (Ignore the white guy on the right.) Luke was America’s sole Asian leading man of his generation – arguably, things wouldn’t evolve beyond that until Bruce Lee crossed over in Enter the Dragon. (Luke anticipated Lee even by playing Cato, the Green Hornet’s inarguably more competent sidekick.) Hell, by 1961, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Hollywood was still allowing its noble Caucasians run condescending rampage over a whole continent’s people!

Anyway, Keye Luke is awesome, and totally comfortable in the Asian mystery format, having long played Charlie Chan’s “Number One Son” Lee. It is an example of Luke’s never-tested acting skill that his one-film interpretation of Wong is nothing like his more naïve, enthusiastic Lee. In Phantom of Chinatown, Luke channels some degree of Karloff’s flat, almost nonexistent performance, but makes it interesting. Consider it: Karloff’s seeming intent with Wong was to be inoffensive – a damned hard thing to do when the costumer has given you prosthetic buckteeth. Karloff’s solution was to make Wong completely without personality – unless the world’s blandest stoicism counts – as an effort to avoid anything which might be construed as anti-Asian. This was his defining trait, to be not stereotypical, and yet Wong remained defined by his Asianness – a thankless paradox, in light of Karloff’s unmistakable English background.

Luke avoids the pitfalls of Karloff’s interpretation by being Asian. Thus he needn’t worry about demeaning an “other,” and must only be concerned with not appearing like the Chinese equivalent of Stepin Fetchit – a role which series regular (or as he’d say, “legural”) Lee Tung Foo has inhabited ever since Mr. Wong, Detective. Instead, Luke plays Wong as a normal person – a completely radical interpretation of race circa 1940, to be sure! To maintain continuity, Luke channels Karloff’s uncharacteristic blandness, but turns it into a straight-faced, deadpan irony. Actually, there’s a bit more to Luke’s surprisingly subtle, varied Wong, which leads to another way in which Phantom of Chinatown is a shockingly atypical movie:

It is a prequel!


Prequels weren’t yet common in the film franchise vernacular by 1940, and Phantom of Chinatown doesn’t advertise this fact, but it remains evident that Luke’s Wong is a younger, less experienced version who would eventually morph into Karloff – race-bending and all!

To prove this is a prequel, and not just typical 1940 half-assed discontinuity (a commonplace occurrence among Poverty Row franchises), Luke’s Wong has only just arrived in San Francisco. He lives out of a hotel with Foo. He first meets Police Captain Street (Grant Withers, officially becoming the sole actor to weather the entire six-film series...eh, he and Foo), and solves his first murder mystery – drawn into it because of a coincidental Oriental connection (and no accidental Occidental!). There are even subtler details, such as the presence of a cop named Grady, whose unseen murder would eventually fuel Part Four, The Fatal Hour.

Sadly, this unofficial prequel status negates the possibility of Marjorie Reynolds’ fantastic Bobbie Logan returning, but Luke more than makes up for that deficiency.

So…prequel when they weren’t made, starring a Chinese actor in a leading role…it’s as though Rosen & Co. knew there was no need to perpetuate the series, and were simply shattering some well-shattered taboos. The result is, to be contrarian with average internet opinion (which holds, predicably, that Part One is always the best), I think the very best film in the Wong throng, made that way by the freedom of being the last.


Hell, even the desultory murder mystery angle is a little fresher this time around! Luke aside, the movie as a whole is a damn lot clearer under Rosen than any of Nigh’s efforts. (Because complex mysteries were never the Wong forte.) Recall, the cases formerly have involved such scintillating non-issues as check fraud, bank statements, multiple unofficial drafts of wills, radio contracts, shipping manifests, and other such effluvia I’ve struggled to give half a shit about. Phantom of Chinatown is instead about archeology! This is awesome!

The opening seems hardly to belong in the Wong swan song. Stock footage unspools about an archeological expedition into Darkest Mongolia, but here it’s legitimately presented as footage – that is, part of a post-trek lecture, so we needn’t play the game of pretending it fits in with Monogram’s rather less grainy original film stock. And in an era where newsreels were one’s window into the world, showing genuine footage of Mongolia has worth. Then, in the midst of this, we randomly flashback to a portion of the archeologists’ journey, simply because Monogram had a temple set lying around.


Cutting to the chase, lecturer Dr. Benton (Charles F. Miller) dies in full audience view when he sips some poisoned water. The suspect roster is comprised of his expedition partners, filling the usual roles – including Lover Couple and Random Crusty Old Dude. As Street and Wong separately look into the matter, for their separate reasons, the motive underlying all this becomes welcomely clear: The killer seeks a scroll. A scroll detailing the whereabouts of the Temple of Eternal Fire (!), and its treasure – which isn’t ancient relics, but oil deposits. Ooh, timely!

You know, phrasing a murder mystery in the genre trappings of an old Republic serial – i.e. if Indiana Jones did more detection, and less Nazi-punching – makes things so much easier to follow. Simply as a common movie motif, pulpy tomb raiding carries rules and connotations, whereas check fraud does not. What follows, for the rest of the film, is remarkably clear, all because “wants a scroll” is as simple as “wants the Ark,” or “the Maltese Falcon,” or “the microfilm.”


Such simplicity is in keeping with Phantom’s prequel status, since Luke’s Wong is just getting a feel for this whole gumshoe thing. He teams up quickly enough with Street. As an example of Phantom’s unique take on the mystery genre, Street and Wong even acknowledge how formulaic the story they’ve found themselves in appears. Each admits – this is the first time an old mystery film has copped to this standard – that the most obvious suspect is never the killer, at least in fiction. This attitude never gets too smarmily “meta,” partly because that wasn’t really an option circa 1940, but it shows Rosen approached Wong more critically than Nigh ever did.

The entire Wong series has distinguished itself by being racially progressive, at least for its time, underplaying or thumbing its nose at then-common notions of “Oriental exoticism.” Phantom of Chinatown takes this idea the furthest, beyond its casting of Luke, by populating a massive amount of the supporting cast with other Asians. The tradeoff of this spontaneous affirmative action is that there were hardly any other Asian actors then available. Lotus Long, long-time (heh?) regular series victim, is promoted to leading lady status, which seems a little beyond her acting abilities, though I’m glad they gave her the chance. Most other Asian actors appear to be complete amateurs. Overall, however, this is a minor problem.


Keye Luke is really the lucky key to Phantom of Chinatown – the mystery, though clear, is mostly disposable, and many other elements on hand aren’t distinct enough from the regular Wong throng (or any Monogram effort, for that matter). Wong is clearly learning his chops (suey – sorry, that’s a joke these films would make), like an incredibly minor variation on Casino Royale’s chief pleasures. That self-aware attitude serves Wong through the end, since he’s not a master detective, not in this version, but just a guy copying what the movies show him. So to finally catch the killer, Wong uses a Charlie Chan Special™ - without actual knowledge or clues, instead he fakes the appearance of such, and instead lays an ambush. The crook(s) is/are arrested, and Wong doesn’t even deign to conclude with a know-it-all expository lecture to fill us all it. That isn’t needed, for things are clear enough already. Events are fast paced, which more than offsets the procedural structure. The characters, especially Wong, are more engaging than usual, proving that is a mystery film’s true bread and butter.

Keye Luke never enjoyed another role nearly as prominent as this one, though he worked prolifically for the rest of a fruitful career, well into the 1980s. Most of Luke’s credits remain in the B-movie miasma of Monogram and their competitors, which is no slight to what he might’ve achieved in a later generation. Phantom of Chinatown, though generic, stands as an example of what might’ve been, and for that I am incredibly grateful.

Mr. Wong, No. 5 - Doomed to Die (1940)

Staring down the prospect of writing and blogging about Doomed to Die, I fear the same sort of apathy which shattered my meager efforts to opine on the former Fatal Hour. There are a few facts (that is to say, one single fact) to pique interest: Though not quite the last in the series (there’s one more), this is Boris Karloff’s final outing as the plot-resolving Mr. James Lee Wong – a Wong swan song. I wish that filled me with some emotion, any emotion, but it’s surprising just how neutral Karloff has been as the titular detective. I don’t know what to attribute that to, the films’ strident and unusual effort to avoid racism, Monogram’s one-take refusal to ever make a movie remotely beyond barely adequate, or simply an apathy on Karloff’s part which rivals my own. The fact is that here he is at his end, with a far awesomer career surrounding him on all sides…Hell, maybe it was just contracts keeping Karloff around for as many lackluster entries as he did.

So, in light of the challenge which Doomed to Die poses to my icy soul, I shall “live blog it,” as it were, and let my initial reactions form what ultimately makes its way online – An old fallback of mine, when inspiration fails, and something I almost always hate doing (last use: Disaster Movie).

First, let us ignore the opening titles, which reveal nothing, and revel in uncharacteristically stereotypical “Oriental” music. La la la la la…

Okay, movie’s on! Stock footage of a ship segues to stock footage of newspapers flying at us (a common aviation hazard in 1940) to warn of a ship-borne inferno. For a bit of exposition, this is clever enough, even leaning upon Monogram’s loony love of midgets.

Now offices, set-bound boredom replacing stock footage zaniness. The movie’s too quick for me, rushing through three character intros (complete with back story, role, personality, everything, so they never need bother with it again), all in the time it takes me to type up “three.” Let’s see, there’s an attorney Victor Martin (Henry Brandon), the besuitedly bland Matthews (Wilbur Mack), and Wentworth (Melvin Lang), the grand poobah of the bunch – who is the likeliest party for first act murder.


The movie continues to unspool speedily, but sans interest, as I take the time needed to take screen caps…As we learn that Wentworth, apart from being a businessman with a murder-baiting will, also has an inevitable-love-interest daughter Cynthia (Catherine Craig). There’s some exposition which hints, obliquely, at the Manhattan Project – surely Monogram’s typewriter simians didn’t know of this by ’40, but this prediction reflects the increasing wartime concern of the era.

Now a similarly suited Cyrus is here (Melvin Lang), to brag with Wentworth about the shipping business – I recall my habit of exceptional wordiness when keyboard-narrating movies, so it’s time to slow down a bit, maybe read a few online articles while doing this too. [Dur de dur…] Oh, here’s Ted! – And by “Ted” I mean “Dick,” because old movies have muddled dialogue often. Dick is either Wentworth’s son-in-law, or his actual son, and I hope it’s the former, because he’s actively seeking Cynthia’s hand in marriage – yup, there’s the standard Young Lover Couple right there – Where’s Wong?! I demand death!

Okay, this is how these mysteries go: Basically every suspect is mad at every other, specifically mad at Wentworth, who’s gone and – No, wait, Cyrus is the murder victim! That’s a surprise! (Small miracles.) “He’s dead.” Dialogue!


Cynthia’s introduction occurs alongside the return of recurring character “Bobbie” Johnson (Marjorie Reynolds), the damn best thing about these movies – channeling just the slightest hint of screwball energy into these more anemic mysteries. And – that scene didn’t last long. I fear this’ll be the way with Bobbie.

Crime scene, now it’s Bill Street’s (Grant Withers) reintroduction, he the series’ secret main character – more than ever now in this epic example of Wonglessness. Street oversees the investigation with his characteristic incompetence, habitually selecting the male half of the Young Lover Couple as el suspecto numero uno – thus Dick is arrested in a random, stylish unrelated scene.

At the station, Street plays with his shackled Dick, trying to agitate Dick so that Dick might spit forth information. Bobbie is there. Wow, there is nothing of note so far, I’d have nothing to say without this stream-of-consciousness approach to lean upon – only Wong’s continued nonexistence is worth noting, but the character is enough of a blank slate for it to not even matter. Nearly twenty minutes in… (Of 67.)

No wait, here is Wong!


I guess it’s a good thing Wong arrived when he did, because the plot was spiraling helplessly out of control – Wong insists that opening stock footage ship indeed had some pertinence. Furthermore, a few of the poor drowned souls aboard it were Chinese, which in this franchise is always a functional substitute for a genuine clue.

Chineseness being enough, Wong is off to Chinatown, a bi-entry sojourn, owing to Monogram’s limited sets – such as the same apothecary store and tong hideout (though as a sequel, set repetition is excusable, as it is the same setting). Tongs and Wong review potential leads, what with secret missions and whatnot and – Okay, I’m hungry! Time to let the movie unspool in silence while I go and procure some microwaveable taquitos…

…

While those delicious morsels cook up, nothing new to report on the movie end. Tongs prong Wong – with violence – leading to a stock footage car chase and – My food is ready!

…

There’s actual gunfire and blood and crashing cars all about, which is rather closer to the late ‘40s Monogram I’m more familiar with. I – [eat eat eat!] – appreciate this approach, this is nonsensical, but is something Monogram can do to overcome the shallow characters, the inconsequential plot, the general disposability. And with that scant uptick in energy, Karloff actually gets a subtle laugh line – something closer to the Karloff one pictures headlining a detective series.

A scene away from Wong, Street or Bobbie, back to Wentworth’s scheming (concerning Cyrus’ presumed suicide, which hasn’t really been stated clearly yet). This isn’t worth commenting upon. [Eat eat eat!]

Eventually our central trio barges upon the scene, to trade further expository info. Surprise surprise, even in this writing approach, I find I cannot commit to actually listening to this mess. I do not care about how Dick relates to Wentworth and the rest, this being the sort of narrative complexity which is hard to present cinematically – an ongoing struggle of period mysteries. Arghh! There’s some effort at using Dick’s obvious innocence to draw us along emotionally, but he is just a tool for pure technical exposition, the same as everybody else.


[Extended pause to fend off a phone call from my bored friend in Wisconsin.]

Okay, it’s a challenge now to regain grounding in the film, so I’ll just dig out on the noir-tinged cinematography – possibly just an accident of cheap resources and B&W film. It’s still moody and effective, especially since a no doubt soon-to-die cat burglar is being stalked up a fire escape by – is that Wong? Yup. Man has a habit of entering buildings via unusual entries – in this case, a tenth-storey window. It’s something, characterization-wise. Yeah, these silent bits of proto-noir, divorced of earth-bound plots, are the best parts of mysteries – that is, when they aren’t being character comedies.

Street enters, pistol a-blazin’, and scares off the burglar without a single fatality. Things calmed down, I retire to heat up some more snacks…

Thankfully, Doomed to Die switches out inky black suspense for more traded comic barbs, courtesy of Bobbie. Food’s ready!


At some point – it goes to show my continued inattention that I cannot say when – Wentworth was killed, fulfilling the needed secondary death. What with a will and all, he really was doomed. [Eat eat eat!] Wong now begins his clever scheming in anticipation of the climax (some 20 minutes away), demanding infrared film – seeing as it’s 1940, this demands a pause for the Crime Lab™ guys to explain to Bobbie (women – sheesh) just what infrared film is, and why we should use it to exterminate the Nazis. Naturally, a lengthy development scene follows, to further ground this new technology. Thankfully, the Bobbie/Street love-hate relationship fuels this scene with humor. Wong remains mostly tiresome.

Down to the docks, to another shadowy Monogram set – Docks, for that automatic injection of atmosphere (unpictured)! The plot reasoning for this – to follow up on a new name on the ship’s manifest, but if you couldn’t tell, I’m beyond trying with this story. Wong, Street and Bobbie all separately creep around dark corridors, in a manner Ed Wood, Jr. would refer to as “lurking.” Bobbie sees something off screen, screams girlishly, and I suppose I can forgive this lapse into female ‘40s stereotyping, seeing as Bobbie is usually totally adverse to such shenanigans. And it reveals the occasional (but not set-in-stone) third corpse, identity yet unknown. (Future edit: It’s Tie Ling, the Asian guy they’ve come down to check up on.)


The creeping scene continues; in fact, the characters’ comic interplay mixes with it, yielding quite possibly the most engaging single sequence yet for Wong & Co. Perhaps energized by these more overtly horrific qualities, Karloff even tosses a little light ham-acting into his Wong – trilled recitations on Chinese artifact history. Things are exciting enough, I’ve even forgotten all about my taquitos. [Eat eat eat!]

And…another fat, style-free exposition scene in the police station. Doomed to Die has been operating at such a relatively elevated level for long enough, some downtime is earned. Time to debate the implications of the latest clues found, as I tune out. I similarly ignore Bobbie’s misconstruing of hari kari as “harry harry.” Odd how everyone (sans Wong, natch) keeps insisting upon suicide for each death, even while the latest dude was stabbed in the back. (Some of this is self-aware, and thus lightly humorous.)

Exposition scene. Ignored. All in service of stiffening Dick’s and Cynthia’s lovey-doveyness.


Time remains only for a climax. For whatever reason, Doomed to Die errs as it did at the start by refocusing upon a house of tiresome suspects. Among them is a larger old man I’ve probably confused with Wentworth throughout the picture, because I only now become aware of him – Paul Fleming (Guy Usher). And…he’s dead, shot, murdered, and someone’s responsible. (Here is a fault in this “immediate response” approach, because the instant I finish that sentence, it turns out Paul isn’t dead, but oh well.)

All this gets Wong, Street, Bobbie, all the people we care about – it gets them assembled with the rest. It plays according to clockwork: Wong makes a surprise allegation so Street can arrest the proper villain, and I’m too ethical as a blogger (and also I’m not paying enough attention) to reveal that shock ending to you. And though this finale isn’t terribly functional, it is a virtue of older movies that they know to quit before things get worse – the movie ended something like a minute ago, in typing time.

In conclusion (what creative writing!), Doomed to Die surprises me more than anyone by being halfway entertaining. Maybe it’s a result of this type-as-I-go approach, but I think it’s something as simple as an increase of stylish ‘40s cinematography. Repeatedly, these forgotten old B-movies excel at visuals, and flounder with narrative – which separate nicely. One recalls Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, which was praised by some of his contemporaries solely for its surreal visuals. The plot is decent, and works, but is mostly frivolous. Doomed to Die works in a similar, but much humbler, level. That is all.

Mr. Wong, No. 6 - Phantom of Chinatown (1940)

Losing the lead actor isn’t necessarily the death knell for a franchise. But with Boris Karloff’s departure from the Mr. Wong series, there was no more need for Wongs – not that Karloff particularly brought anything to the series, except his mere presence. Oddly, Karloff proved the universe wrong and found a role he could be boring in, but that name on the marquee was enough to fuel five movies entirely on its own. With Karloff off, there is now no reason for Monogram to wring Wongs for long – to say nothing that the Wong “creative” team (director: William Nigh, writer: some guys). So, freed from the expectation that the final Wong is anything but a one-off, new director Phil Rosen (familiar from many an East Side Kids film, notably Spooks Run Wild) does something wholly unprecedented for a series about an Asian detective:

He hires an Asian actor!

Between the sixty-one shared films of Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto and Mr. Wong (the curiously prolific “Chinese detective” sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-subgenre of mystery movies), only one film goes beyond the white race when casting its hero, and that’d be this movie, the final Wong – Phantom of Chinatown. Amazing to think that there was a time in Hollywood when slapping some yellowface and falsely slanty eyes on a Caucasian was the preferable alternative to providing minority actors with employment…which goes to show how progressive the overall Mr. Wong series has been to simply respect its Mr. Wong character, and not characterize him as an archaic and unsubtle stereotype. And when you’re casting a legitimate Asian lead in 1940 Hollywood, there is literally only one name on that list: Keye Luke


Keye Luke kicks ass! (Ignore the white guy on the right.) Luke was America’s sole Asian leading man of his generation – arguably, things wouldn’t evolve beyond that until Bruce Lee crossed over in Enter the Dragon. (Luke anticipated Lee even by playing Cato, the Green Hornet’s inarguably more competent sidekick.) Hell, by 1961, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Hollywood was still allowing its noble Caucasians run condescending rampage over a whole continent’s people!

Anyway, Keye Luke is awesome, and totally comfortable in the Asian mystery format, having long played Charlie Chan’s “Number One Son” Lee. It is an example of Luke’s never-tested acting skill that his one-film interpretation of Wong is nothing like his more naïve, enthusiastic Lee. In Phantom of Chinatown, Luke channels some degree of Karloff’s flat, almost nonexistent performance, but makes it interesting. Consider it: Karloff’s seeming intent with Wong was to be inoffensive – a damned hard thing to do when the costumer has given you prosthetic buckteeth. Karloff’s solution was to make Wong completely without personality – unless the world’s blandest stoicism counts – as an effort to avoid anything which might be construed as anti-Asian. This was his defining trait, to be not stereotypical, and yet Wong remained defined by his Asianness – a thankless paradox, in light of Karloff’s unmistakable English background.

Luke avoids the pitfalls of Karloff’s interpretation by being Asian. Thus he needn’t worry about demeaning an “other,” and must only be concerned with not appearing like the Chinese equivalent of Stepin Fetchit – a role which series regular (or as he’d say, “legural”) Lee Tung Foo has inhabited ever since Mr. Wong, Detective. Instead, Luke plays Wong as a normal person – a completely radical interpretation of race circa 1940, to be sure! To maintain continuity, Luke channels Karloff’s uncharacteristic blandness, but turns it into a straight-faced, deadpan irony. Actually, there’s a bit more to Luke’s surprisingly subtle, varied Wong, which leads to another way in which Phantom of Chinatown is a shockingly atypical movie:

It is a prequel!


Prequels weren’t yet common in the film franchise vernacular by 1940, and Phantom of Chinatown doesn’t advertise this fact, but it remains evident that Luke’s Wong is a younger, less experienced version who would eventually morph into Karloff – race-bending and all!

To prove this is a prequel, and not just typical 1940 half-assed discontinuity (a commonplace occurrence among Poverty Row franchises), Luke’s Wong has only just arrived in San Francisco. He lives out of a hotel with Foo. He first meets Police Captain Street (Grant Withers, officially becoming the sole actor to weather the entire six-film series...eh, he and Foo), and solves his first murder mystery – drawn into it because of a coincidental Oriental connection (and no accidental Occidental!). There are even subtler details, such as the presence of a cop named Grady, whose unseen murder would eventually fuel Part Four, The Fatal Hour.

Sadly, this unofficial prequel status negates the possibility of Marjorie Reynolds’ fantastic Bobbie Logan returning, but Luke more than makes up for that deficiency.

So…prequel when they weren’t made, starring a Chinese actor in a leading role…it’s as though Rosen & Co. knew there was no need to perpetuate the series, and were simply shattering some well-shattered taboos. The result is, to be contrarian with average internet opinion (which holds, predicably, that Part One is always the best), I think the very best film in the Wong throng, made that way by the freedom of being the last.


Hell, even the desultory murder mystery angle is a little fresher this time around! Luke aside, the movie as a whole is a damn lot clearer under Rosen than any of Nigh’s efforts. (Because complex mysteries were never the Wong forte.) Recall, the cases formerly have involved such scintillating non-issues as check fraud, bank statements, multiple unofficial drafts of wills, radio contracts, shipping manifests, and other such effluvia I’ve struggled to give half a shit about. Phantom of Chinatown is instead about archeology! This is awesome!

The opening seems hardly to belong in the Wong swan song. Stock footage unspools about an archeological expedition into Darkest Mongolia, but here it’s legitimately presented as footage – that is, part of a post-trek lecture, so we needn’t play the game of pretending it fits in with Monogram’s rather less grainy original film stock. And in an era where newsreels were one’s window into the world, showing genuine footage of Mongolia has worth. Then, in the midst of this, we randomly flashback to a portion of the archeologists’ journey, simply because Monogram had a temple set lying around.


Cutting to the chase, lecturer Dr. Benton (Charles F. Miller) dies in full audience view when he sips some poisoned water. The suspect roster is comprised of his expedition partners, filling the usual roles – including Lover Couple and Random Crusty Old Dude. As Street and Wong separately look into the matter, for their separate reasons, the motive underlying all this becomes welcomely clear: The killer seeks a scroll. A scroll detailing the whereabouts of the Temple of Eternal Fire (!), and its treasure – which isn’t ancient relics, but oil deposits. Ooh, timely!

You know, phrasing a murder mystery in the genre trappings of an old Republic serial – i.e. if Indiana Jones did more detection, and less Nazi-punching – makes things so much easier to follow. Simply as a common movie motif, pulpy tomb raiding carries rules and connotations, whereas check fraud does not. What follows, for the rest of the film, is remarkably clear, all because “wants a scroll” is as simple as “wants the Ark,” or “the Maltese Falcon,” or “the microfilm.”


Such simplicity is in keeping with Phantom’s prequel status, since Luke’s Wong is just getting a feel for this whole gumshoe thing. He teams up quickly enough with Street. As an example of Phantom’s unique take on the mystery genre, Street and Wong even acknowledge how formulaic the story they’ve found themselves in appears. Each admits – this is the first time an old mystery film has copped to this standard – that the most obvious suspect is never the killer, at least in fiction. This attitude never gets too smarmily “meta,” partly because that wasn’t really an option circa 1940, but it shows Rosen approached Wong more critically than Nigh ever did.

The entire Wong series has distinguished itself by being racially progressive, at least for its time, underplaying or thumbing its nose at then-common notions of “Oriental exoticism.” Phantom of Chinatown takes this idea the furthest, beyond its casting of Luke, by populating a massive amount of the supporting cast with other Asians. The tradeoff of this spontaneous affirmative action is that there were hardly any other Asian actors then available. Lotus Long, long-time (heh?) regular series victim, is promoted to leading lady status, which seems a little beyond her acting abilities, though I’m glad they gave her the chance. Most other Asian actors appear to be complete amateurs. Overall, however, this is a minor problem.


Keye Luke is really the lucky key to Phantom of Chinatown – the mystery, though clear, is mostly disposable, and many other elements on hand aren’t distinct enough from the regular Wong throng (or any Monogram effort, for that matter). Wong is clearly learning his chops (suey – sorry, that’s a joke these films would make), like an incredibly minor variation on Casino Royale’s chief pleasures. That self-aware attitude serves Wong through the end, since he’s not a master detective, not in this version, but just a guy copying what the movies show him. So to finally catch the killer, Wong uses a Charlie Chan Special™ - without actual knowledge or clues, instead he fakes the appearance of such, and instead lays an ambush. The crook(s) is/are arrested, and Wong doesn’t even deign to conclude with a know-it-all expository lecture to fill us all it. That isn’t needed, for things are clear enough already. Events are fast paced, which more than offsets the procedural structure. The characters, especially Wong, are more engaging than usual, proving that is a mystery film’s true bread and butter.

Keye Luke never enjoyed another role nearly as prominent as this one, though he worked prolifically for the rest of a fruitful career, well into the 1980s. Most of Luke’s credits remain in the B-movie miasma of Monogram and their competitors, which is no slight to what he might’ve achieved in a later generation. Phantom of Chinatown, though generic, stands as an example of what might’ve been, and for that I am incredibly grateful.

The Tramp, No. 6 - Modern Times (1936)

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.

The Tramp, No. 6 - Modern Times (1936)

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.