A Review of Charlie Chaplin’s Film Modern Times
Modern Times (1936) is a funny comedy; however, this silent film presents a very serious socialist critique of twentieth-century society. Chaplin portrays a factory worker on an assembly line that his tight-fisted employer keeps accelerating beyond the laborer’s capacity to keep up. The control-freak owner values only efficiency, so he spies on his workers via a television screen. He scolds them when they smoke during their five-minute breaks. The employer resembles Big Brother in George Orwell’s novel 1984 (published in 1949). Also, the boss has Chaplin’s character test a new efficiency machine that enables a worker to eat while still doing his job. Obviously, the capitalist does not want to give workers any time for relaxation. But the machine malfunctions, mauling Chaplin, and the boss decides not to use it after all. Machines with many large cogs dominate this movie as a symbol of the modern world. Chaplin includes many scenes in which the workers get caught in these cogs, representing their being ensnared in the capitalist enterprise that has no concern for workers’ safety,…