Modern Times

Modern Times (1936) is Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp's swan song and last (mostly) silent film. The film celebrates individuality in the face of the modern industrial society-and the film is divided into four parts-"The Factory Worker," "The Jailbird," "The Department Store Security Guard," and "The Singing Waiter." In the first the assembly line drives the Little Tramp mad and he finds himself in an institution. When he gets out he meets the Gamine, a female street urchin who will be his partner in crime. It she that gets him a job as the singing waiter and we hear the Tramp speak for the first time, but it is really a sort of fraught-Italian. And int he end the Tramp goes off on the road with the Gamine-for the first time not alone. It's easy to see why this film is considered a classic-it has many standout images and scenes throughout the film. It gets the first rate Criterion treatment with the following extras: new audio commentary by Charlie Chaplin biographer David Robinson, two new visual essays, by Chaplin historians John Bengtson and Jeffrey Vance, new program on the film’s visual and sound effects, with experts Craig Barron and Ben Burtt, an interview from 1992 with Modern Times music arranger David Raksin, plus a selection from the film’s original orchestral track, two segments cut from the film, All at Sea (1933), a home movie by Alistair Cooke featuring Chaplin and actress Paulette Goddard, with a new score by Donald Sosin and a new interview with Cooke’s daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge, The Rink (1916), a Chaplin two-reeler, For the First Time (1967), a short Cuban documentary about first-time moviegoers seeing Modern Times, Chaplin Today: “Modern Times” (2003), a program with filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne,three theatrical trailers, and a booklet featuring a new essay by film critic Saul Austerlitz and a new piece by film scholar Lisa Stein that includes excerpts from Chaplin’s writing about his 1930s world tour.