Arkansas Society for Cinema and Television Production (ASCTP)

(a Non-Profit Education Corporation)

contact: Gary William Jones gary@jonesfilmvideo.com

Glossary of Film Terms: http://www.filmsite.org/filmterms1.html

RTV 3303-001 Spring 2010 Class #5 Modern Times (1936)

Chapter 6: Hollywood in the Twenties

Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film, Third Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.

…Modern Times (1936), a film about the dehumanization of the common working man in a world run for the wealthy by machines. In it, Chaplin plays a factory worker who is fired when he suffers a nervous (but hilarious) breakdown on the assembly line, moves through a variety of other jobs, and ends up unemployed but undefeated. The film’s satire on industrialization and inequity in the “modern times” of the Great Depression earned it little popularity among the powerful in the United Sates, where in some quarters it was call “Red propaganda,” or in German and Italy, where it was banned. But Modern Times was enormously successful in the rest of Europe, and it remains today one of Chaplin’s funniest, best structured, and most socially committed works.

…the assembly line in Modern Times was based on Henry Fored’s Model T “factory belt” system—the result of a VIP tour Chaplin had been given by Ford of his Highland Park plant in 1923. (pp. 202-3)

Chaplin also drew inspiration from the French film A nous la liaberte (Liberty Is Ours) (1931), directed by Rene Clair. Modern Times had so many similarities with the earlier French film that Clair was pressed to sue Chaplin for copyright infringement. Clair declined, saying that he could only be honored to have inspired so great a filmmaker as Chaplin. (

…Chaplin (was) a fanatical perfectionist who “rehearsed” on film, shooting and printing literally hundreds of takes until he got a particular sequence right or rejected it. (p. 205)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin

(Biographical excerpts on Wikipedia entry for CHARLIE CHAPLIN:)

Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comedian, actor, film director and composer. Chaplin became one of the best known film stars in the world before the end of the first world war and continued to utilise mime, slapstick and other visual conventions of the silent cinema well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency from the end of the 1920s. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, Chaplin co-founded United Artists in 1919.

Chaplin acted in, directed, scripted, produced and eventually scored his own films as one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. Chaplin himself was heavily influenced by a predecessor, the French silent movie comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his films. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer almost until his death at the age of 88. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's identification with the left ultimately forced him to resettle in Europe during the 'Red scare' period in the early 1950s.

In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th greatest male actor of all time. In 2008, Martin Sieff in a review of the book Chaplin: A Life, writes: "Chaplin was not just 'big', he was gigantic. In 1915, he burst onto a war-torn world bringing it the gift of comedy, laughter and relief while it was tearing itself apart through WWI. Over the next 25 years, through the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler, he stayed on the job. It is doubtful any individual has ever given more entertainment, pleasure and relief to so many human beings when they needed it the most".[2] George Bernard Shaw, having in mind the peerless quality of Chaplin's work and that he performed virtually every role in creating his films – actor, director, producer, scriptwriter, musical scores etc., called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry".

Chaplin's earliest films were made for Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios, where he developed his tramp character and very quickly learned the art and craft of film making. The public first saw the tramp when Chaplin, age 24, appeared in his second film to be released (7 February 1914), Kid Auto Races at Venice.

As new immigrant groups arrived in waves to America silent movies were able to cross all the barriers of language, and spoke to every level of the American Tower of Babel, precisely because they were silent. Chaplin was emerging as the supreme exponent of silent movies, an emigrant himself from London. Chaplin's Tramp enacted the difficulties and humiliations of the immigrant underdog, the constant struggle at the bottom of the American heap and yet he triumphed over adversity without ever rising to the top, and thereby stayed in touch with his audience. Chaplin's films were also deliciously subversive. The bumbling officials enabled the immigrants to laugh at those they feared.[15]

While Modern Times (1936) is a non-talkie, it does contain talk—usually coming from inanimate objects such as a radio or a TV monitor. This was done to help 1930s audiences, who were out of the habit of watching silent films, adjust to not hearing dialogue. Modern Times was the first film where Chaplin's voice is heard (in the nonsense song at the end, being both written and performed by Chaplin). However, for most viewers it is still considered a silent film.

Although "talkies" became the dominant mode of movie making soon after they were introduced in 1927, Chaplin resisted making such a film all through the 1930s. He considered cinema essentially a pantomimic art.

************

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0XjRivGfiw Modern Times 1/9

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvNQiF89Pek&feature=related Modern Times 2/9

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8LxscnmdNY&feature=related Modern Times montage to Atari game sounds