Talk:Modern Times (film)

Languages

Spanish

I noticed that the banners at the demosntration are in English and in Spanish. Were there many Hispanic workers in California by that time or was it a wink to the Spanish-language moviegoers? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Error (talk • contribs) 02:41, 2 September 2003 (UTC)

"By that time"? Check the history of California. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.188.29.244 (talk) 19:15, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

The song

The song that Chaplin sings, is in pure gibberish? Is there any meaning? It seems to me that there are hints of French and Italian. Is the music original? I think I have heard it before watching the film. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Error (talk • contribs) 02:41, 2 September 2003 (UTC)

It is gibberish, of course! :-) --SeeFood 13:20, 8 March 2005 (UTC)

It's called "the nonsense song"! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.160.89.235 (talk) 12:46, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

It's a total nonsense, only a few words mean something, like "voulez-vouz" and "taximeter" --213.91.184.25 (talk) 21:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, much like Hynkl's Teutonic-sounding gibberish in The Great Dictator. "Strunk!"Coloneldoctor (talk) 02:47, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The song has far more than just a few hints of French and Italian. Some of the words are made up of words from multiple languages, such as French nouns turned into verbs with Italian verb forms. The first verse is about somebody with an adorable face (he pantomimes face and I could not figure out the words he was using or if he literally said face) and they go out cavorting.

The next verse is about the fat man. He eats spinach, (spinach in the mouth) using a play on the French word for mouth. His large belly (port belly) is described using the word portobello which is a kind of mushroom. It sounds like the next sentence is about writing a small speech, assuming he is using the German word for speaking and the Italian diminutive form. It's really hard to tell completely since it's made up from so many different things that there's no way to be sure what he had in mind.

He invites a Senora to have a seat in a taxi to take a tour. I'm not sure what else he was trying to say in that verse (except what one can infer from the pantomime) but there are clearly words in the languages he used that mean all of what I heard, albeit with the word forms modified.

One verse sounds like it's is saying I am alone, will you be my fiance, I leave [something] quickly... There are also two verses that I did not understand what the words were supposed to be.

I'm not an expert in French, Italian, Spanish and German, but have studied them all. I know enough about what he is saying to be certain he is using the words in a specific fashion to have meaning. On the other hand, he is using pronouns and conjunctions (mostly French) in nonsensical ways grammatically, and often in ways that have nothing to do with what he is saying, except to keep the rhythm going. It's quite possible that the parts I don't understand are mostly or even all gibberish. But Chaplain's grasp of the languages was good enough and he was clever enough that I doubt he would have been purely arbitrary. Gibberish has no intended meaning, but the song does.

One could either infer that Chaplain was being very clever with word play or that he was just making up gibberish, which by coincidence happened to be words in other languages (or forms thereof) that had the same meaning as what he was miming, not to mention what the words on his cuff meant. He did not use the words on the cuff at all, but the story comes out the same.

Hagrinas (talk) 18:34, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

• • The background music to the song is the opening of the song Titina repeated, with new words added, and the silly sounds of horns and stuff. It might be worth mentioning on this article since it was mentioned in the other article, but I haven't seen a really good reference to them being exactly the same. Here are two links to it on YouTube.

Billy Murray - Titina, 1925 Transcribed version of Chaplin's words Maybe someone can find a good reference for a link between the two songs. (Floppydog66 (talk) 15:48, 6 October 2010 (UTC))

Synopsis

Why is the synopsis missing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stangoldsmith (talk • contribs) 18:41, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Synopsis missing? I see a synopsis. But maybe that's just me. However, I did notice the synopsis seems to list most of the jobs Chaplin has throughout the movie, but it does not list the part in which he does something relating to a boat/ship. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.68.74.43 (talk) 03:31, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Grammar

the paragraph that starts "This scene..." should be edited. It's not clear what "This" is referring to. Amirman 05:57, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

• I went ahead and fixed it myself Amirman 17:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Man, I spent a good deal of time fixing the grammar in this article. I notice that my repairs have been undone by some very poor and confusing sentences. Oh well, that is wikipedia. Advice, if you don't have a good grasp of English grammar, please don't make grammatical repairs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.108.64.240 (talk) 06:31, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

If only the illiterates of the planet would be so kind...Coloneldoctor (talk) 02:48, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Gamine or Gamin?

Does it matter that the credits identify the "gamin" rather than "gamine" ? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ChaplinModernTimesGamin.png for a screen shot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Richard k smith (talk • contribs) 08:45, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

A minor point perhaps, but worth noting. The movie title cards and credits identify Paulette Goddard's charcter as a "Gamin" while the article here uses "Gamine". Both mean the same thing, an orphaned or neglected child or street urchin with "Gamin" the masculine, and "Gamine" the feminine. The article does use the technically correct term for the gender of the charcter, but in the movie she is termed "Gamin" which would seem to be her offical designation in lieu of a name. This may have been an error on Chaplin's part or a deliberate usage. In either case the article should note it. Thoughts? Mediatech492 (talk) 16:35, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

As no-one has responded I'll assume no-one objects to changing "Gamine" the article to "Gamin". The artist's intentions were clearly to call the character Gamin. Mediatech492 (talk) 16:13, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Technologies

One oddity that struck me while watching the factory scenes just now, is that in several aspects the film makes significant use of CCTV, or the implication of CCTV technologies (the factory manager several times uses a "videophone" (for want of a better word) to communicate commands to the operator in the control centre, "Man". Also, in the lunchtime scene, Chaplain is spotted malingering by the factory manager in a very "Big Brother-ish" scene. I'd be surprised if this was the absolutely earliest implication of TV technologies in the cinemas, but outside "SciFi", it's likely to be a contender. It also throws some more light on the political implications of the movie, but that would take someone with a wider knowledge of (and interest in) movie history than I have to write up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by A Karley (talk • contribs) 16:27, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Not really a contender, I'm afraid, even outside of SciFi. Off the top of my head, the 1933 comedy film "International House" has an entire plot that centres around the development of a new type of television. That's a full three years prior to Modern Times. 172.162.49.201 (talk) 16:58, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Pirate Style in the Factory: Where is it from?

The scene when the Tramp goes crazy, picks up an oil gun, climbs up the iron chains, whields the oil gun like a saber and gives the audience a short swashbuckler-speach: is it taken from a certain movie? When I was a kid and saw Modern Times first, I immediately knew what was meant when Chaplin acted like that, but up to date I still don't know which exact movie the scene is taken from or inspired by. The Black Pirate with Douglas Fairbanks, maybe, or Captain Blood with Errol Flynn? Does anyone know and may put it in the article? --JakobvS (talk) 12:19, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Confusing sentence

"The film did attract criticism for being almost completely silent, despite the movie industry having long since embraced the talking picture."

The second part seems irrelevant to the first. Wolf O'Donnel (talk) 01:01, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

References to use

Please add to the list references that can be used for the film article.

• Wartenberg, Thomas E. (2007). "Illustrating a philosophical theory: Modern Times". Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. Routledge. pp. 32–54. ISBN 0415774314.

Restorations

Australian television (SBS) has just shown a newer restoration from MK2, which is prefaced:

"The first photochemical restoration of Modern Times was carried out by Cineteca di Bologna at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in 2000. In the same year, thanks to a meticulous, 14-month long restoration of Charlie Chaplin's symphonic score, the film was accompanied for the first time by live orchestras world-wide, allowing a full discovery of its extraordinary richness and complexity.

In 2013 Cineteca di Bologna and the Criterion Collection joined forces to improve the previous restoration by employing digital technology: the fine grain, struck from the original nitrate camera negative, was scanned wet-gate to remove traces of dirt, white spots and numerous scratches. The image was also stabilized."

Would somebody with appropriate expertise please incorporate this information? Errantios (talk) 11:00, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Section needs rewriting

I am moving an uncited, argumentative section of the article here so that it can be rewritten to fit encyclopedic style.

Themes

Analyzing Modern Times leads us to get a deeper understanding of what Chaplin was trying to achieve by creating and producing this film. The film explores several themes relating to how the times were during the release of this movie, including man vs machine, the powerlessness of the poor, and concern for unemployment, poverty, and crime. Chaplin displays the subject with the absence of words, emphasizing the significance of extreme body movements and various music clips to convey this story.

One of the main themes in Modern Times is the conflict of man vs machine. The beginning of the film presents the protagonist's physical struggle with the factory machine, and desperate attempts to keep pace with the machinery's rapid speed. Analyzing this deeper, we discover what Chaplin is trying to interpret through his own comical and extreme body movements. It begins to depict the dehumanizing effects of industrialization and automation on the working class. The Tramp struggles to adapt to the modern industrial world and faces numerous challenges while working on an assembly line. Another scene that conveys meaning is when Al Ernest Garcia is presented with a machine that can feed workers hands-free while they continue to work, discarding lunchtime. It is made to seem as if we are physically tied down to our work and there is nothing we can do because of the looming existence of unemployment.

Another theme in the film, the looming presence of the powerlessness of the poor portrays a society that is highly stratified, with the wealthy and powerful exploiting the poor and working class for their own gain. In this film, those representing power are the factory owners and police, who use their position and authority to control the lives of those below them, the workers and the unemployed. This can be depicted through the film, as the owner of the factory was the only one who had a voice in the factory, giving the scene that they would be able to control, watch and take the power of the workers away at any second.

Unemployment, poverty, and crime are also issues that are explored in the film. The protagonist, like others during the Great Depression, is struggling to find work after he is fired from his dreadful job. His experiences outside of the factory highlight the challenges and desperation there is that come with unemployment. Struggling to make ends meet despite his best efforts, for example, the house he created that was falling apart, portrays the pervasive theme of poverty. The film creates links between poverty and crime, having the protagonist be fired from his job, accused of theft, chased by the police, and end up in jail.

Finally, the significance of extreme body movements that were displayed by Chaplin and the absence of words in Modern Times is definitely noteworthy. The film relies heavily on physical comedy and exaggerated body movements to convey the story, as there is very little dialogue. This approach allows the film to transcend language barriers and communicate its message through visual and physical humor. Additionally, the absence of words emphasizes the dehumanizing effect of industrialization and automation on the working class, as their voices and opinions are silenced.

nonmodernist (talk) 17:31, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

"Classic"

"Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance has written of the reception and legacy of this classic comedy"

Is it ok to call something a "classic" as a factual statement in an encyclopedia? Isn't it more of a subjective thing rather than saying "it is widely regarded as a classic"? Is it against NPOV? I'm asking out of curiosity. Dornwald (talk) 01:50, 26 March 2024 (UTC)