Modern Times : Charlie Chaplin

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Still, from my mind, I can’t wipe out the image of the man jammed in between the machines as well as I can’t put aside the advanced usage of CC video surveillance in film, whereas the technology was still burgeoning in the world. Both things are radical and absolute motifs of the machine-driven modern world.

The sweeping indicator of capitalist and free-market economy’s aggression and guerilla administrative and organizational principles and strategies. Consequently, it follows a nervous breakdown of the Tramp. As a business professional I can still face the same administrative treatment in my workplace and I have seen many corporates have bound to quit to avoid the awful psychological stress and to switch into another professional track.

Personally, I feel uncomfortable when someone is surveilling my minute movements and intruding on my privacy. Long before “Modern Times' ', Bentham demonstrated the concept of “optimal Prison” as the sole and ideal tools of disciplinary power.

When the world goes through a deep-seated transformation, we, as a mere human being, experience the same but do not keep the marrow of it alive for a long time. Eventually we almost forget within a generation. But the written and pictographic media bring the gone to us like a mirror shows us our true picture. I don’t know any other movie makers but Charlie, Griffin and Eisenstein were able to reflect the world before the second half of the 20th century.

It’s blatantly clear that after the great depression and at the dawn of great war, the world’s been occupied in poverty, class conflict and technological colonization in the humanoid system. I was thrilled to see Ellen’s [Paulette Goddard] audacity to begging, stealing, fleeing from the societal establishment and emergent turmoil in the economy as well as amazed to watch again Tramp’s [Charles Chaplin] pantomime portrayal of current affairs.

If any director wants to portray the contemporary seamlessly in the silver screen, Modern Times [1936] would be perfect reference in its own right.  I felt agony when I came to know that Modern Times had been Chaplin’s last feature film where he played the Tramp but also his last as an entire silent film. I feel right as Chaplin felt that a voiced Tramp would fail to be totally artistic in film.

 

Modern Times [1936]

Charlie Chaplin

English, USA.

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