BIG'S BIG MOVIE LIST

     I haven't seen a lot of silent films, but the ones I have seen have been phenomenal. There is something about the raw grain and faint hum of the camera reels that I feel parallels the sort of “purity” that can be heard on old vinyl records. Watching silent film is like looking on an historical relic, showing the viewer the primordial ooze from which modern film sprang.

Chaplin's 1936 silent classic “Modern Times” is an episodic comedy examining the relationship of technology and dehumanization in the Depression era.

 

A Factory Worker (Charlie Chaplin) suffers a nervous breakdown while working on an assembly line at a factory. Immediately following his release from the hospital, the Worker is mistaken for a communist agitator and is sent to jail. Upon his release, he meets a beautiful waif (Paulette Goddard) and the pair set off on a series of hilarious escapades so madcap and wacky that one almost forgets they are vagrants living hand to mouth in dire times.

 

This movie is a marvelous satire of the machine age, inspired in part by a conversation between Chaplin and Gandhi in which Gandhi complained about how machines were taking over. From the opening shot of a flock of sheep (and one black sheep!) dissolving into a flock of men rushing to their factory jobs, I was hooked. Chaplin's frenetic physical comedy is still hilarious almost 80 years later, and the story is a well wrought string of misadventures and mishaps (one such scene involving a salt shaker full of cocaine [yes, really] had me in hysterics).

 

The soundtrack in this film is also excellent, giving perfect flavor and life to the characters, their actions, and their emotions.

 

This movie is a milestone in film history for numerous reasons.

 

First, it is the very first time Charlie Chaplin's character The Tramp actually audibly speaks in a film. It was Chaplin's original intention to make The Tramp speak throughout the film. Spectacularly, everything he speaks in the final cut is in song, and it is a hilarious Italian-sounding gibberish coupled with pantomime.

 

Second, this film is the last time in film history (excluding satire and novelty films in the years to come) to use title cards to convey dialogue. Chaplin is credited with saying the last lines of the silent film era : “Buck up – never say die. We'll get along!”

I have yet to give a perfect 5/5 to a film as of yet, but I see no reason why this film is not, for its time and place, perfect.