The film ‘Modern Times’ takes place after the Great Depression when jobs were still scarce, but industrialization was on the rise. We meet the Little Tramp, Charlie Chaplin’s character in his final appearance as a worker in the factory. In true Chaplin style, the film has minimal dialogue and is in black and white with Chaplin’s signature song ‘Smile’ playing in the background multiple times throughout the film. The film was released in 1936. Throughout the film, we see Chaplin take on jobs such as a factory worker, an employee in a department store, a waiter and a performer, showing that he couldn’t quite find his footing of where he truly belonged. Also, in the film, he befriends a woman played by Paulette Goddard and the two try to adjust to the changing ways of life. The film is considered a slap stick comedic movie with Chaplin’s signature style of pantomime.
The Little Tramp, as Chaplin’s character is known starts of the film as a factory worker, like many people were during the era. In a famous factory scene that would pave the way for Lucille Ball’s famous factory scene, Chaplin is shown tightening bolts repeatedly. This shows the monotony that is factory work. In a sense, you can say that being a factory worker is the definition of insanity- doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. As well, in that same scene, it can be said that working a factory job becomes muscle memory; when off the job, you will still perform the job because you are programmed to do. This insanity and muscle memory lead the Little Tramp to have a mental breakdown and be sent to an asylum. After his release, he has a tough time finding a job and subsequently gets arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This becomes a recurring theme in the film. In the film, factory workers are shown as robots-emotionless and only allowed to do their work and nothing else. The humor in this is that robots are rumored to take over the world. In today’s day and age, technology has taken over the world to the point where it has become a basic need. When people look at their way of life today, the necessities are food, shelter, clothing, water, electricity and internet. Without electricity and internet, people walk around like a chicken with its head cut off. In a way, Chaplin foreshadowed what the world would turn into. This would also suffice as one of Chaplin’s messages.
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With Chaplin’s foreshadow of a future being technology run, he once was quoted as saying, “Unemployment is the vital question…machinery should benefit mankind. It should not spell tragedy and throw it out of work”. This quote makes Chaplin’s message clearer: being a factory worker is monotonous and will drive anyone to insanity. Is that why factory workers were replaced by machines? Today, the job of factory worker has been replaced by machines doing the same job for no pay. Technology has advanced so much that we can take jobs away from people and give them to machines or even robots that will do the same job a human did but faster, with no pay and no arguments since robots cannot talk back. Sure, in some places it helps to have machines do work such as in the medical field where robots can perform surgeries. In one scene in the film, the Little Tramp was used as a guinea pig to test out a machine that would feed workers while they workers so they wouldn’t have to take a lunch break. This shows that factory workers were not treated very well. This film also came at a pivotal time; the end of the great depression but also the end of the silent film era. Chaplin was not a fan of the change into ‘talkies’, so in ‘Modern Times’ he only used dialogue when technology was used. This is shown when the boss of the factory comes on the television screen and when salesmen used a phonograph. Another time technology was used is when the Little Tramp gets a job in a department store and a moving stairway is shown-known better today as an escalator. This raises the question of if Chaplin’s message has relevancy today.
Today, factory jobs for humans have become nonexistent. In the film, Chaplin shows that being a factory worker takes a toll on your mental health as seen in the scene where he goes through the chute into the cogs. The scene symbolizes being eaten by technology which leads to the Little Tramp’s mental breakdown. With Chaplin’s message being that your mental health will take a toll if you work in a factory, his message still rings true but not necessarily for a factory worker. Chaplin’s message can apply to anything a person does in life. Anyone would get bored of doing the same thing day in and day out, so we try to find things that keep us excited. Chaplin uses this theme in his comedic style of pantomime. The film also shows the pressures of being a factory worker in the sense that they are expected to do their work with no errors. This could’ve been a catalyst to the Little Tramp’s mental breakdown.
In conclusion, Charlie Chaplin uses comedy to break away from the pressures of the real world. Sound familiar? Everyone needs an escape from reality at one point or another and Chaplin lead the way for others such as the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers and Robin Williams to create scenes where one can escape reality and just have a good laugh. It is crazy to think that a movie from the 1930s still has an impact on the world today, but the movie still has relevance because it still predicts what the future could look like with the expansion and advancement of technology. The movie also raises awareness for issues in the workplace such as being over worked, not getting enough pay, monotony and the importance of healthy mental health. In the end of the movie, Chaplin and the Gamin trade life in the city for the simple country life as they walk away hand in hand. The reason for this is that they dream of having a home and that wasn’t possible in the city because of all the pressures that were associated. The last dialogue we see is “We’ll get along”, which shows that the Little Tramp was willing to start a new life with the Gamin. Some would argue that ‘Modern Times’ is a political statement to show what happens in factories and that change is necessary. I would agree with this statement because the film shows that after the Great Depression, there was a lot of pressure for people to get jobs to upkeep their style of living but jobs weren’t in a surplus. Today, people either work to live or live to work. In a way, the film was ahead of its time for showing the future and teaching lessons on the workplace.
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