FILM REVIEWS

Playing a factory worker struggling to survive in an unidentified industrialized society, Charlie Chaplin created in “Modern Times” one of the most poignant and elaborate critiques of mass production and the mechanization of 20th-century life.

“Modern Times” marked the last screen appearance of the Little Tramp–the character which had brought Charles Chaplin world fame, and who still remains the most universally recognized fictional image of a human being in the history of art.

The world from which the Tramp took his farewell was very different from that into which he had been born before the First World War. Then he had shared and symbolized the hardships of all the underprivileged of a world emerging from the 19th century. “Modern Times” found him facing very different predicaments in the aftermath of the Great Depression, when mass unemployment coincided with the massive rise of industrial automation.

A socially-aware artist, Chaplin was preoccupied with the economic problems of the new age. In 1931, he left Hollywood, embarking on a long world tour. In Europe, he was disturbed to see the rise of nationalism and the social effects of the Depression, of unemployment and of automation. He read books on economic theory and devised his own Economic Solution –an intelligent exercise in utopian idealism, based on a more equitable distribution not just of wealth but of work.

In the movie, as the hapless Tramp executes some of his most famous slapstick routines, he accidentally ends up in the middle of a communist rally and falls in love with a street waif played by Chaplin’s then real-life partner Paulette Goddard.

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Cast

Charles Chaplin – FACTORY WORKER

Paulette Goddard – GAMINE

Henry Bergman – CAFÉ OWNER

Stanley J. ('Tiny') Sandford – BIG BILL / WORKER

Chester Conklin – MECHANIC

Hank Mann – BURGLAR

Louis Natheaux – BURGLAR

Stanley Blystone – SHERIFF COULER

Allan Garcia – COMPANY BOSS

Sam Stein – FOREMAN

Juana Sutton – WOMAN WITH BUTTONED DRESS

Jack Low – WORKER

Walter James – WORKER

Dick Alexander – CONVICT

Dr Cecil Reynolds – PRISON CHAPLAIN

Myra McKinney – CHAPLAIN‘ S WIFE

Lloyd Ingraham – PRISON GOVERNOR

Heinie Conklin – WORKER

John Rand, Murdoch McQuarrie – CONVICTS

Crew

Director/Producer/Writer – CHARLES CHAPLIN

Assistant Directors – CARTER DE HAVEN, HENRY BERGMAN

Photography – ROLAND TOTHEROH, IRA MORGAN

Art Directors – CHARLES D. HALL, RUSSELL SPENCER

Music – CHARLES CHAPLIN

Arrangers – EDWARD POWELL, DAVID RAKSIN

Musical Director – ALFRED NEWMAN

Musical themes used in addition to original compositions: 'Halleluiah, I'm a

Bum', 'Prisoners' Song' (C. Massey), 'How Dry Am I?, 'In the Evening By the

Moonlight' (Bland), Je cherche après Titine' (Duncan and Daniderff)

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Running Time: 87 Minutes