Modern Times

Having watched only one other Charlie Chaplin film, Gold Rush, I went into this movie with some knowledge of Chaplin's style and familiarity with his famous character the tramp. I have to say that I was very pleased with the movie, it kept with the silent film style and I loved Charlie's performance. Every little nuance he puts in the performance has meaning and seems very deliberate, it adds to his acting and improves it overall. Also in watching Charlie in this movie, many people would characterize his character as off-kilter  and clumsy. That being said, while the character is clumsy, I realized that Charlie is in fact extremely graceful and in control of all his motions. I find it impressive, as well as one of my favorite parts of the movie, that Charlie can make the audience perceive him as spastic and out of control when in fact he is in complete and total control and creating a facade of clumsiness without it seeming artificial. Another aspect of the movie that I liked was the fact the movie wasn't played at 24 fps and at 18, giving it the very sped up and comical feel. The higher rate of speed just seems to make everyone's actions more chaotic and funny. As for the themes of the movie that I felt were most prominent, I found recurring examples of people being self-involved and people being on their own; as well as a backlash against the steps toward becoming industrialized and reliant on technology. Chaplin's character as well as the gamin, for the most part seem to be on their own and trying to survive by their own means, be it being overworked in a factory, or stealing bananas and bread to feed yourself. They are alone until they have an encounter with one another, and at that point it seems they are the exception to the idea of being alone and they become exemplars of what the audience should want to be. They begin to try to work together and strive towards the American dream, often with some success coupled with defeat immediately after. In the end, the gamin says that trying is useless but Charlie's character says to buck up and never give up because there will always be something ahead of them. As for the technology aspect of the movie, I feel that Charlie's personal views on technology had a huge influence on its depiction in the movie. Charlie was trying to hold off on converting to sound in movies and used it very strategically in the movie. He mostly used it for little background noises to accent actions as well as the musical score. All of the actual talking in the movie is shown in a negative light, but in a subtle way. Almost all scenes with speech, the dialogue is being spoken through some technological means, the screen that the boss talks to his workers out of, the record player for the sales pitch, and the radio in the tea scene; the one exception being Charlie's song which he does in gibberish. Having all the dialogue be done in this manner shows Charlie's idea that we need to be weary of technology because if we just accept and embrace technology in all facets of our lives, things will become very inhuman and sometimes less efficient, defeating the initial purpose. And also him singing the song in gibberish only further proves his point, his expressions and motions tell the story just as well, if not better than if he were to directly tell it to the audience. In summation, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, Charlie's acting style and choice to keep this movie mostly silent makes for a better movie and also proves the point that the film is trying to convey about becoming reliant on technology.