I have to say that watching Modern Times again was a little bittersweet for me. The first time I saw it, I don't think I really knew a lot about silent films or the early decades of Hollywood. There's still a lot for me to learn, even now. But knowing a bit more, now, than I did, and having all the foresight from my first viewing, it became very clear how much of an emotional journey this film represents for Charlie Chaplin. It's very much about his struggle with the advent of sound, of course, but it's also about having to rediscover his creativity, and about moving on.
In Hollywood, a documentary series from the 1980's, famed silent film star Lillian Gish said, "I don't think film should have married words. It separates the world. Film and music brings the world together again and they all understand it." This was a common understanding of cinema. Aside from music (and, really, instrumentals at that) the world didn't have a mass medium. It couldn't be translated or misinterpreted. It let us use simply our eyes to receive stories, to feel connected to each other with feelings and excitement. With sound, we could no longer understand the story if it came from another country. Along with that, it over-spectalized it, if that's a word I didn't just make up. It was seen, in some way, as reducing the refined art of telling stories through actions, purely through pictures.
King Vidor said, "When sound started, that's when popcorn began, because you could turn away and look and talk to your girlfriend and unwrap candy bars and all that and you wouldn't miss anything. You could hear it at the same time. In silent pictures, you couldn't eat popcorn and do drinks because you had to watch the screen all the time and you had to interpret what was going on."
Now even though I think King Vidor is totally insensitive and impolite because he just assumes that I have a girlfriend and didn't see The End of the Tour alone on a Friday, he makes a valid point.
It's the reason why subtlety is important in cinema. There just no point in being talked down to by entertainment. If you're not discovering anything yourself, making inferences, being moved because the images on screen stimulate thoughtful responses in your brain, why did you even pay to go into the theater?
Silent era Hollywood had achieved a high art of doing all of those things. Sound was a distraction and a gimmick, made for spectacle and to draw in a crowd. Of course, it now does amazing things and it's often as integral to the experience as the images. Directors and actors of the silent era didn't know it yet. It was a threat.
Great filmmakers like Chaplin weren't going to just quit because of this, though.
That isn't to say they didn't make bad talkies.
Modern Times was made when silent films were already completely out the door. In fact, it's not totally silent in and of itself. It's structured as a hybrid of sound and silent, not only for transitional purposes for Chaplin, but as a thematic device to express Chaplin's ambivalence towards this new cinematic world.
Sometimes people are on top, they've found their place. Time never stops going on, though, as we can see with the ticking of the clock and the excitedly menacing music that plays with the opening credits.
The reaction to sound starts off rather hostile and angst-y, as sheep are match cut with a crowd of people as they head to work.
As I said, Chaplin includes sound elements in the film. All voices are heard only through screens and machines, and at that, the voices are often commanding and totalitarian. They are orders given sternly by rich businessmen imposing harsher and harsher standards on their workers.
In a scene where an inventor wants to try his automated dinner machine on a worker, he sells it by saying it requires less effort and energy, something promised by the invention of sound as described by King Vidor. The machine is impressive at first, but soon goes on the fritz and batters Charlie mercilessly. It's impractical, frivolous, and ultimately comes with too many flaws.
The scene is also hilarious.
Not that much time is spent, however, criticizing this new advancement for it's danger to the art of film. More so, sound elements showcase Chaplin's ambivalence over the technology and uses comedy to come forward about his insecurities and mounting pressure in the new film landscape.
The sound imbalance is established right at the beginning, where no characters speak in reality unless it is through a machine, making a distinction between words in the reality of the film and words in the meta-reality. Even when Chaplin eventually uses his voice at the end, it is nonsense words, defying the usurpation of witty dialogue and instead presenting his voice as a comedic sound effect. Yet the world everyone lives in is populated by noises such as closing doors, pulled levers, and footsteps. They live in a sound world, now, but have yet to speak. At once, Chaplin is acknowledging the value of sound to create a more rich and vivid world for cinema, and also abstaining from the less expressive form of communication that dialogue represents.
Later on, he starts opening up to sound in more creative ways, playing and experimenting with its comedic potential. In the scene where Charlie is about to be let out of prison, he sits next to a snooty woman and they both drink tea which gives them gas. The gurgling stomach sounds provide the necessary context, humor, and suspense and also allow for more subtle facial reactions. In a totally silent film, this scene may have been done with a gaudy stomach rubbing pantomime and perhaps an intertitle. With sound it was able to be constructed smoothly and given a deadpan nuance.
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| The YouTube version stretched it out beyond its original aspect ratio. Poo. |
This experimentation culminates in the famous nonsense song scene. Chaplin's character finally gets a steady job at the restaurant his young and beautiful tramp girlfriend now works at (played by his then real life girlfriend Paulette Godard). At this point, both Chaplin and his character know that they have never used their voice, but because of the circumstances it is now necessary for success. The question on the audience's mind is how will he sing and remain Charlie?
His girlfriend writes his lyrics on his cuff because he cannot remember the words, but he comically loses them while dancing. He improvises by singing the tune of the song in a French-Italian gibberish, which I mentioned before. He's encouraged by his girlfriend who says, "Sing! Nevermind the words," in intertitle, of course. Remarkably, the audience roars at the indecipherable language as if they understand.
Aside from playing with sound, Charlie includes a variety of clever visual gags that were a staple of his time throughout the film. The aesthetic and the story line expands upon the Tramp character as well, fleshing out his world and providing a sort of closure to that entire paradigm.
Some simple gags, such as Charlie uncontrollably putting his wrenches on everything during a nervous breakdown and generally just frolicking and goofing about with no excuse in the story, brings us back to what he does best.
Another little thing I appreciated was Charlie's large and intimidating cell mate in prison, which is a classic silent film dynamic that any silent actor in a jail scenario has done.
He also utilizes a number of impressive set pieces, most famously in the scene where he is fed through a series of gears after falling on top of a conveyor belt.
Not only does the image have thematic aspects, but it's done in that flat, fantastical, Georges Méliès-esque style.
When it comes to the bittersweet, it's the realization that greater emphasis is being placed on the Tramp character and his world that gives the film its wistful quality.
Several times in the beginning, Charlie's usual antics, even his trademark walk, are self referential and speak to a very real desperation to please. His penguin-like strut is now jittery and compulsive from working too hard. When he takes a smoke break, the boss on the screen interjects and tells him to get back to work. Much of the laughs come from his inability to keep up with the conveyor belts (famously inspired by René Clair's A Nous la Liberté). So, there's a sense of weariness layered upon his well-known bits, and that's also intertwined with the feeling of exasperation from the sound thing.
After his nervous breakdown, he emerges from the institution in his classic Tramp outfit, and the rest of the movie is filled with the Tramp's beloved hijinks and shortcomings.
However, being among the poor (such as Paulette Godard and her family) protesters (he accidentally leads a communist rally, resulting in his first jail stay) and laborers (nearly every job he gets is a labor job, and the one job that isn't is set upon by thieves who turn out to be his former co-workers who are starving) places the Tramp more explicitly in his world, that of the outcasts. This is the last film really featuring the Tramp character (although a variation would appear in The Great Dictator (1940)) and Chaplin takes the opportunity to finally flesh out that world, completing it so that he may ultimately move on from it.
At the end, the Tramp is back on the run, now accompanied by his tramp wife. The sun setting, he struts his trademark strut toward the mountains. Both he and Chaplin are heading for bigger horizons, though the Tramp will eternally remain in his special world, having found love and purpose at last.
The next film on the Registry is The Maltese Falcon (1941)
