I'm going to watch this film tomorrow. Will I laugh at this?
I think Sacha Baron Cohen, South park, The Office, Monty Python(some)are funny.
Why I ask is because my friend who has studied film, claims that this film is untouchable in many people's eyes and that Modern Times isn't funny these days.
It's an important film in the history of cinema and has a lot of positives when viewed knowing the context of the time it was made it. However the humour doesn't necessarily remain timeless, so while recognising skill of Chaplin I can't say it made me laugh all that much
shareThe humor is mostly the humor of pity -- being caught up in predicaments completely in accident for which he has no culpability yet bears the consequence. Grabbing the red flag from a lumber truck and chasing it down while a Commie parade forms behind him -- such isn't the sort of humor that people do anymore.
shareI found it painful to watch, 15 mins then I was out.
Seems to me Chaplin was reluctant to embrace the microphone. This came out 6 years after the introduction of sound.
He was a "one trick pony", a duck waddle and twirling cane, once sound hit, he was found out.
Just look at his career pre 1930 and then post. The little man didn't know what hit him.
Laurel & Hardy, Marx Bros, WC Fields all had funny things to say, Chaplin had nothing and it shows.
I was walking down the skyway my way...
Except he did a talkie with "The Great Dictator", and it's still one of the greatest films of all time. And he includes sound in "Modern Times".
Chaplin wasn't fighting against technological advances. He was fighting against modernization for the sake of modernization. He felt that he didn't need to make the Tramp speak in order for his film to make sense. He found more value in the aesthetic of silence. That's not "wrong" or "backwards". It's just a different way of presenting films. But aside from you being completely backward in your thinking on every point you make, you're completely right.
But it must feel nice to hurl insults at one of the most talented physical comedians of the last century from the safety of your desk chair.
@cavALier1138
That's very nicely put, but I'm not trying to insult the man (your word, not mine).
I'm just trying to say he didn't have anything to say, when sound came in, he was at a loss, his movie list is testament to that. As I said in my first post, his output shrank because he hadn't anything funny to say and the public didn't want silent movies any more.
You say, "He found more value in the aesthetic of silence."
How quaint, but the public didn't, he stood against the incoming sea and was swamped.
Sound was in, Chaplin was out.
BTW I can shout it from the rooftops that Laurel & Hardy were the greatest comedians from that era.
But if you don't agree, then all my shouting is never gonna change that.
You percieve Chaplin as some sort of comedic demi-god, I do not and all your hot-fingered typing isn't gonna change that.
I was walking down the skyway my way...
I don't particularly care if you don't like Chaplin.
My point was that you're wrong about him sticking to silent films because he couldn't handle sound. The Great Dictator (and his history in the theatre) proves that he was more than capable of creating amazing work with dialogue. He even used sound in Modern Times, but he made the specific choice to not suddenly give voice to a character who had stayed silent for over a decade.
And again, standing up for your art in the face of a fad (which is what talkies were at the start) isn't a bad thing. Are you going to criticize every director who doesn't make their movies in 3D because they aren't bending to the will of the public?
[deleted]
Humour is very personal. If you don’t find something funny nothing can ever change that. However, I think what you say about Chaplin is definitely off-target.
Notoriously, there were some Silent stars that couldn’t make the transition to Sound, but Chaplin doesn’t seem to have been one of them.
It is true that he made relatively few films in the Thirties and Forties but that was simply a continuation of a well-established trend. In his youth, Chaplin churned out short films at a frantic rate, but in the early Twenties he slowed down dramatically. For example, when he set up United Artists with Fairbanks, Pickford and Griffiths it was on the basis that he would make four films a year for the company. In fact, he struggled to deliver one film every four years.
Chaplin was not ‘found out’ by the arrival of sound. His two films in the Thirties (City Lights and Modern Times) were both huge hits and The Great Dictator (1940) was the biggest hit he ever had.
Chaplin was certainly reluctant to embrace speech (he felt the Little Tramp would lose his universal appeal if he had a specific voice or language) but this didn’t mean he rejected sound. City Lights included a parody of the tinny sound quality that made early talkies hard to follow and in Modern Times he used nonsense language to poke fun at bar room ballads.
Above all, Chaplin was not a ‘one trick pony’. The cane and the walk were the Little Tramp’s signature, but the films in which he appeared were built around complex routines that were carefully honed in endless rehearsals and then executed with breathtaking precision (check out the roller skating sequence in Modern Times on YouTube, for example).
Like you, I don’t find Chaplin’s routines particularly funny, but I am enthralled by how well choreographed and how precisely executed they were. For many decades this was obscured by deteriorating film stocks, but with digital restoration we are again seeing just how clever some of his sight gags really were and what a brilliant performer he could be.
The biggest problem I have with Chaplin is his face. When it is completely deadpan, the Little Tramp might well be the universal symbol of resilience and hope that Chaplin wanted him to be, but when Chaplin smiles his features twist into a creepy, wheedling, ratty smirk that just makes me want to punch him.
KM
I just watched it and was roaring out loud during the food machine segment, hysterically funny. The scene with the "nose powder" was also very funny, with a few other segments as well.
When people today state that he's not that funny or that Modern Times doesn't hold up well, etc. they seem to forget that he was so original that many of today's comedy scenes are just copies of what he first did or were inspired by his techniques. The same goes for Laurel and Hardy, who originated so many classic segments.
You've done some bad things, sweetie.
Just watch it. You can even just go check it out on youtube. The movie is freely available now.
sharethat'd be outdated for you.. but still hilarious for me, because every deaf people loves chaplin
share