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Hello Dear Friends, I'm presenting a blog about the grate movie. This is the blog about the Movie The Modern Times and The great dictator.
#The Modern Times
"Modern Times” is a silent black and white film, performed and directed by Charles Chaplin in 1936. Movie shows especial effects as speed up in some shots, explosions, and reverse reproduction.
#The Modern Times
The opening title to the film reads, “Modern Times: a story of industry, of individual enterprise, humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.” At the Electro Steel Corporation, the Tramp is a worker on a factory conveyor belt. The little fellow’s early misadventures at the factory include being volunteered for a feeding machine, a time-saving device employed so that workers may continue working during their lunch breaks. Ultimately, the Tramp has a nervous break-down and throws himself down a chute into the belly of the factory. Released from the hospital, he quickly lands in prison as a communist leader when he innocently picks up a red flag that has fallen from a truck and finds himself inadvertently leading a workers’ parade. After the Tramp prevents a jail break, life in prison becomes so pleasant (he is better fed, clothed, and sheltered in the safe and secure prison than in the chaos of society during the Depression)
that he is saddened to be pardoned.
This silent movie show mostly non diegetic sound, background music that coincides with action and movement of the film. It also has a few scenes of Diegetic sound, for example when Chaplin is performing at the café. Here we can clearly hear diners talking, murmuring, laughing and cheering. We hear the music they are actually playing and the voice of Chaplin, who is actually singing.
“Modern Times” is Chaplin’s self-conscious valedictory to the pantomime of silent film he had pioneered and nurtured into one of the great art forms of the twentieth century. Although technically a sound film, very little of the soundtrack to “Modern Times” contains dialogue. The soundtrack is primarily Chaplin’s own musical score and sound effects, as well as a performance of a song by the Tramp in gibberish. This remarkable performance marks the only time the Tramp ever spoke. Chaplin resisted talking pictures in part because the Tramp’s silence made him understood around the world. However, with the gibberish song, Chaplin ingeniously makes the statement that talking in any one language is meaningless in all others, while at the same time allowing the Tramp to “speak” in a way that is universally understood. It was the Tramp’s swan song. Chaplin retired the character with “Modern Times.”
Film use deep backgrounds with moving objects, locations as streets and yards, and other places as restaurants, jail, offices and houses. Mise en scène is impressive when it comes to represent the fabric, you can appreciate tiny details in background like gear, levers and lines of production.
Chaplin recognized that “Modern Times” was the valedictory for the Tramp and deliberately included many gags and sequences as a loving farewell to the character and an homage to the visual comedy tradition. However, the spine that holds the story together is the journey of survival taken by the Tramp and the Gamine. The final shot of the film, as the Tramp walks down a road into the unknown, is more than a reprise of Chaplin’s signature finale. This time, the Tramp is not alone. And this time, the Tramp carries the legacy of silent film down the road with him. “Modern Times,” as Hollywood’s last silent
film, represents the end of an era.
“Modern Times” boasts Chaplin’s finest music score. His most recognizable and commercially viable song, “Smile,” emerged from a melody used by him in “Modern Times.” “Smile,” with a completed structure and lyrics, was created to promote the reissue “Modern Times” in 1954. “Smile” is still considered a popular standard today.
Comedy and philosophy genders are an unusual combination in a same film. Chaplin’s philosophy is peaceful, he looks for fairness and avoid problems. He doesn’t support the new capitalist ideas, and modern stereotype. As a film director, he shows those qualities in the film “Modern Times”, a realist critic to the capitalism. Personally, I think Chaplin was wise when merging this genres; comedy and political discontent. Audience was captured by the comedy, by the “Charles Chaplin” character. Thanks to comedy, Chaplin gave the message to the audience he wanted. The main message of the film “Modern Time” is an anti-capitalist movement where modernity is shown as the chaos; the worker loses everything while government controls it. We can clearly observe the inequality, the abuse and the impositions established by the rich class in the film, first the business boss, then the police and finally the government.
“Modern Times” is perhaps more meaningful now than at any time since its first release. The twentieth century theme of the film, farsighted for its time—the struggle to eschew alienation and preserve humanity in a modern, mechanized world—profoundly reflects issues confronting the twenty-first century. The Tramp’s travails in “Modern Times” and the comedic
mayhem that ensues should provide strength and comfort to all who feel like helpless cogs in a world beyond control. Through its universal themes and comic inventiveness, the film remains one of
Chaplin’s greatest and most enduring works.
Perhaps more important, it is the Tramp’s finale, a tribute to Chaplin’s immortal character and the silent film era he commanded for a generation.
This film has a scene that depict great differences between social classes. There's a moment of parallelism between reality and a dream. A moment in which Chaplin and his partner are happily lying on the grass, then they saw a typical modern married couple. The man leaving home and going to work, and the wife staying house. They first joke and parody the situation, but then they dream about it. They imagine them in a real house, with food, comfort and all facilities.
“Can you imagine us in a little home like that?” – Chapplin
Then they stop fantasizing and return to rude reality, they were homeless, without work, starving and alone.
Times were hard, workers were low paid, they work in bad conditions, and were injured several times while working. In one scene Chaplin goes mentally crazy because of his work. In other scene he finds out that his ex-partners have to steal for leaving. Strikes and manifestation are common in this times. Every time a manifestation was started, policemen arrive in order to arrest the leaders. In my opinion, Chaplin represented all the innocent persons that, while expressing in a pacific way, were unfair arrested by the government.
During this film, a clear example of this inequality and racism classes is shown. The chief, who demanded much discipline to his employees, is only interested in growing your business. He interrupt recesses and was about to remove the “lunch time”. Interested on been better than the competitor, the boss, chose Chaplin for a new machine evaluation. Here we can compare the modern worker to a dependent domestic animal, accepting what master says, with no right of choosing or making own decisions. Finally the experiment fail, leaving Chaplin injured and confused.
Meanwhile, the Gamine has found work dancing in a café and persuades the café proprietor to hire the Tramp as a singing waiter. The Tramp’s complete lack of skill
tending to tables in the café is compensated for by his great success as a singing waiter. However, the juvenile-care authorities pursue the Gamine, forcing them to flee their new jobs and take to the open
road. Discouraged, the Gamine asks the Tramp, “What’s the use of trying?” Summoning his trademark ptimism, the Tramp responds, “Buck up! We’ll get along!” Heartened, the Gamine replies, “You betcha! Let’s go!” Arm in arm, they walk off to-
ward the horizon, off to pursue a better life. It is the Tramp’s very last shuffle down the open road. This time, however, he has a companion by his side.
This movie shows how difficult is for majority to have a “perfect” life under capitalism. Chaplin capture the despair of the lower classes, nothing but the reality that people live those days. He also capture the value of perseverance and tolerance at the end of the film. The final image is him and his couple walking in straight line. Waiting for new problems to confront and overcome, and facing all those changes that bring the modern times.
#Reference
1. https://youtu.be/HAPilyrEzC4
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Times_(film)
#The Grate Dictator
In 1938, the world's most famous movie star began to prepare a film about the monster of the 20th century. Charlie Chaplin looked a little like Adolf Hitler, in part because Hitler had chosen the same toothbrush moustache as the Little Tramp. Exploiting that resemblance, Chaplin devised a satire in which the dictator and a Jewish barber from the ghetto would be mistaken for each other. The result, released in 1940, was "The Great Dictator," Chaplin's first talking picture and the highest-grossing of his career, although it would cause him great difficulties and indirectly lead to his long exile from the United States.
The Great Dictator made in 1940 by Charlie Chaplin was at the time a controversial film because it exposed Nazism and anti- Semitism with both humor and horror. In his film, Chaplin plays the two main characters: Adenoid Hynkel, the tyrannical dictator of Tomania and a Jewish barber persecuted by Storm Troopers in the ghetto.
In 1938, Hitler was not yet recognized in all quarters as the embodiment of evil. Powerful isolationist forces in America preached a policy of nonintervention in the troubles of Europe, and rumors of Hitler's policy to exterminate the Jews were welcomed by anti-Semitic groups. Some of Hitler's earliest opponents, including anti-Franco American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, were later seen as "premature antifascists"; by fighting against fascism when Hitler was still considered an ally, they raised suspicion that they might be communists. "The Great Dictator" ended with a long speech denouncing dictatorships, and extolling democracy and individual freedoms. This sounded to the left like bedrock American values, but to some on the right, it sounded pinko.
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