Modern Times is a 1936 epic comedy film written and directed by Charlie Chaplin in which his iconic Little Tramp character struggles to survive in the modern, industrialized world. The film is a comment on the desperate employment and financial conditions many people faced during the Great Depression, conditions created, in Chaplin’s view, by the efficiencies of modern industrialization. The movie stars Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Tiny Sandford and Chester Conklin.
Modern Times was deemed “culturally significant” by the Library of Congress in 1989, and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Fourteen years later, it was screened “out of competition” at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival
Chaplin prepared the film in 1934 as his first “talkie”, and went as far as writing a dialogue script and experimenting with some sound scenes. However, he soon abandoned these attempts and reverted to a silent format with synchronized sound effects and sparse dialogue. The dialogue experiments confirmed his long-standing conviction that the universal appeal of his “Little Tramp” character would be lost if the character ever spoke on screen.
This was the last of Chaplin’s silent movies
Director: Charles Chaplin
Writer: Charles Chaplin
Stars: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman
Movies From The Silent Era 