List Price : $29.95 Price : $18.71
Product Description
Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin’s last outing as the Little Tramp, puts the iconic character to work as a giddily inept factory employee who becomes smitten with a gorgeous gamine (Paulette Goddard). With its barrage of unforgettable gags and sly commentary on class struggle during the Great Depression, Modern Times—though made almost a decade into the talkie era and containing moments of sound (even song!)—is a timeless showcase of Chaplin’s untouchable genius as a director of silent comedy.
Amazon.com
Charlie Chaplin is in glorious form in this legendary satire of the mechanized world. As a factory worker driven bonkers by the soulless momentum of work, Chaplin executes a series of slapstick routines around machines, including a memorable encounter with an automatic feeding apparatus. The pantomime is triumphant, but Chaplin also draws a lively relationship between the Tramp and a street gamine. She's played by Paulette Goddard, then Chaplin's wife and probably his best leading lady (here and in The Great Dictator). The film's theme gave the increasingly ambitious writer-director a chance to speak out about social issues, as well as indulging in the bittersweet quality of pathos that critics were already calling "Chaplinesque." In 1936, Chaplin was still holding out against spoken dialogue in films, but he did use a synchronized soundtrack of sound effects and his own music, a score that includes one of his most famous melodies, "Smile." And late in the film, Chaplin actually does speak--albeit in a garbled gibberish song, a rebuke to modern times in talking pictures. --Robert Horton
Modern Times (The Criterion Collection) Reviews
Modern Times (The Criterion Collection) Reviews
| 54 of 56 people found the following review helpful  The Tramp In The Machine, By This review is from: Modern Times (Two-Disc Special Edition) (DVD) MODERN TIMES opens with its credits being printed out over a close-up image of a clock ticking interminably forward. The film's first real shot is of mindless sheep being herded through gates, which fades into an image of factory employees exiting a subway stop on their way to work. Looking at this from a modern standpoint, one can only think that the more things change, the more they stay the same.This is a film that I can watch over and over again. It's not just that it's an incredibly funny film. It's not just that its satire of modernization and industrialization still rings true today. It's that each aspect of the filmmaking pulls together to form something greater than each individual part. The story ranges from big topics concerning the Great Depression and dehumanization, while successfully balancing that with the small love story between the tramp and the gamin. In a theme that would be revisited even more powerfully in LIMELIGHT, the two characters need each... Read more 21 of 22 people found the following review helpful Charlie Chaplin at his sublime peak, By This review is from: Modern Times (Two-Disc Special Edition) (DVD) The more I watch it, the more I feel that Charlie Chaplin's sublime silent MODERN TIMES (1936) is his finest film. THE GOLD RUSH (1925) is too desolate for my tastes, and CITY LIGHTS (1931) does not have the exquisite Paulette Goddard (then Chaplin's wife) as leading lady. MODERN TIMES is more episodic than other Chaplin features--six or seven one reel comedies strung together for 83 minutes. There are two incomparable segments set in a dehumanizing factory (in this silent film, the boss speaks over surveillance photography)--Chaplin gets caught inside the gears of a machine, while much later his boss, Chester Conklin from the Keystone Kops, has the same thing happen during lunch hour. It is hysterical to see Chaplin feed lunch to the upside down head of Conklin inside the machine. It is also pricelessly funny when Charlie is guinea pig for a new mechanized lunch demonstration that fails miserably.Meanwhile, out along the waterfront (location work was done at San... Read more 16 of 16 people found the following review helpful Great presentation of an all-time classic, Amazon Verified Purchase This review is from: Modern Times (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray) Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times is one of my favourite films and arguably one of the best films ever made. The movie remains incredibly funny while also managing to be a significant artistic achievement in cinema design and social commentary. For Chaplin fans, it marks the last appearance of his "little tramp" character and, not coincidentally, his last film without full synchronized sound. The film does include music, sound effects, and the occasional voice, including a segment at the end where we get to hear the tramp sing a short nonsense song. However, as a film released 10 years into the sound movie era, the film is also something of an enigma. It presents perhaps the most famous silent film character in a film that purports to be silent, yet it features futuristic factory machinery (reminiscent of Metropolis) and large close-circuit flat screen video displays that would have looked almost like science fiction back in the 1930's.This new Blu-ray release from... Read more |
› See all 86 customer reviews...
No comments:
Post a Comment