Modern Times

     This is the blog about “ Zeitgeist of the 20th Century: From Modern Times to the Era of Great Dictators” in response to the task given by the Head Of the Department, Dr. Dilip Barad. This blog deals with the Zeitgeist of the 20th century with the help of the movie “The Modern Times” and “The Great Dictator” By Charlie Chaplin, which directly attacks the ‘Mechanism’ and cruelty of ‘Hitler’ and his ‘Dictatorship’.

Both movies are written and directed by Charlie Chaplin and he was the leading actor as well in both films.  Before discussing more, let’s have a glance at the great personality of Charlie Chaplin…

"Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease from pain."

 - (From “Mr. Chaplin Answers His Critics”; The Comedian Defends His Ending of ‘The Great Dictator by Charles Chaplin, The New York Times, 27 October 1940.)

Charlie Chaplin, byname of Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, (born April 16, 1889, in London, England—died December 25, 1977, Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland), British comedian, producer, writer, director, and composer who is widely regarded as the greatest comic artist of the screen and one of the most important figures in motion-picture history.

 life and career:

Chaplin was named after his father, a British music-hall entertainer. He spent his early childhood with his mother, the singer Hannah Hall after she and his father separated, and he made his own stage debut at age five, filling in for his mother. The mentally unstable Hall was later confined to an asylum. Charlie and his half-brother Sydney were sent to a series of bleak workhouses and residential schools.

Using his mother’s show-business contacts, Charlie became a professional entertainer in 1897 when he joined the Eight Lancashire Lads, a clog-dancing act. His subsequent stage credits include a small role in William Gillette’s Sherlock Holmes (1899) and a stint with the vaudeville act Casey’s Court Circus. In 1908 he joined the Fred Karno pantomime troupe, quickly rising to star status as The Drunk in the ensemble sketch A Night in an English Music Hall.

While touring America with the Karno company in 1913, Chaplin was signed to appear in Mack Sennett’s Keystone comedy films. Though his first Keystone one-reeler, Making a Living (1914), was not the failure that historians have claimed, Chaplin’s initial screen character, a mercenary dandy, did not show him to best advantage. Ordered by Sennett to come up with a more-workable screen image, Chaplin improvised an outfit consisting of a too-small coat, too-large pants, floppy shoes, and a battered derby. As a finishing touch, he pasted on a postage-stamp mustache and adopted a cane as an all-purpose prop. It was in his second Keystone film, Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914), that Chaplin’s immortal screen alter ego, “the Little Tramp,” was born.

His 35 Keystone comedies can be regarded as the Tramp’s gestation period, during which a caricature became a character. The films improved steadily once Chaplin became his own director. In 1915 he left Sennett to accept a $1,250-weekly contract at Essanay Studios. It was there that he began to inject elements of pathos into his comedy, notably in such shorts as The Tramp (1915) and Burlesque on Carmen (1915). He moved on to an even more lucrative job ($670,000 per year) at the Mutual Company Film Corporation. There, during 18 months, he made the 12 two-reelers that many regards as his finest films, among them such gems as One A.M. (1916), The Rink (1916), The Vagabond (1916), and Easy Street (1917). It was then, in 1917, that Chaplin found himself attacked for the first (though hardly the last) time by the press. He was criticized for not enlisting to fight in World War I. To aid the war effort, Chaplin raised funds for the troops via bond drives. (Britannica) 

        “On the morning of March 2, 1978, nine weeks after Charlie Chaplin's funeral in Vevey, Switzerland, the superintendent of the village cemetery discovered fresh mounds of dirt, wet with rain from the night before, around the great man's burial plot and a yawning hole in the middle. The casket had vanished. Could it be that even in death the most famous comedian in the world was still capable of the tricky moves that had inspired so much laughter? The disappearance of his body was, after all, no less bizarre, no less unexpected, than the comic inventions of his films or the events of his long and colorful life. To me, the image of his empty gravesite came to symbolize his historic elusiveness, as a person no less than as a performer, and the difficulties he presents to the biographer of pinning him down.” (Kenneth Lynn. in ‘Charlie Chaplin and His Times') 

            He had a very sorrowful childhood, Charlie Chaplin’s father, a British music hall entertainer, and mother, singer Hannah Hall, separated, and Chaplin spent his early childhood with his mother. When the mentally unstable Hall was later confined to an asylum, Chaplin and his half-brother, Sydney, were sent to a series of workhouses and residential schools. Though he made out successful throughout not only in history but till date!   In his last years, Chaplin was accorded many of the honors that had been withheld from him for so long. In 1972 he returned to the United States for the first time in 20 years to accept a special Academy Award for “the incalculable effect he has had on making motion pictures the art form of this century.” It was a bittersweet homecoming. Chaplin had come to deplore the United States, but he was visibly and deeply moved by the 12-minute standing ovation he received at the Oscar ceremonies. As Alistair Cooke described the events,

Chaplin made one of his final public appearances in 1975 when he was knighted. Several months after his death, his body was briefly kidnapped from a Swiss cemetery by a pair of bungling thieves—a macabre coda that Chaplin might have concocted for one of his own two-reelers. 

  Modern Times: 

As one can well observe the lead role which is obviously played by ‘Tramp’, always behaves so innocently/witty throughout the movie. Tramp is that he looks at life through the eyes of a child, a naive observer as he “innocently” bumbles along. But we can only love this comic character if we can manage to avoid objectively seeing what is happening to him in his time. He simply does not seem to know fully, nor understand his world well enough, when he acts; thus, the consequences of his actions seem comic. But if we do not identify with its main character and look at the film in its historical context, then we see the debris and remnants of his actions as disastrous, not as hilarious. The machines of Chaplin’s modern times of the mid-1930s dehumanize all the film’s characters—the Tramp, his associates, as well as the “gamine.” In Modern Times, industrialization affects all the characters: from “the factory boss nursing his ulcers,” as recorded in Chaplin’s preliminary notes, to the unemployed workers in the street ( Chaplin: His Life and Art 460)2.

Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp is an enigmatic representation of the modern man in the modern times of the 1930s. He is swept up and carried along by the “modern” (contemporary) socio-economic currents of his age, in which he remains a vagabond who comically struggles with his fate. As we will see, he places himself (or, more often than not, his circumstances place him) into many roles that include—in addition to a factory worker—shipyard worker, thief, night watchman, and waiter, but he seems most comfortable when placed (often of his own volition) as a prisoner living in “his comfortable prison cell.” Exactly halfway through the film, his passive acquiescence to his storm-tossed fate will be tested by a woman. And he will continue to fail.

1] One can well observe the starting of the movie, which starts with the ‘Clock’ which symbolizes two things: 1] Mechanism, 2] slavery of Time. this clock shows that every man is the slave of the clock which is being made by machines. 

2] The second aim in the movie was - “ Herd”, the first camera focuses on the herd of sheep and in second focuses on the herd of men. This signifies that like sheep men also don't use their own thinking and follow the ‘herd’ rather than mind and prove Gujarati saying - 

“ટોળાંમાં બુદ્ધિ ના હોય” 

3] The third thing which highlights the “ Machines” in the movie shows huge machines and tiny humans which clearly drags our attention to what Tramp/Charlie wants us to observe.

4] The fourth thing which is relevant today is the control of individual privacy. In the movie, the boss keeps an eye on all the employees in the washrooms also. In today’s time, the Government is keeping an eye on every single person through the CCTV camera (But it will never work when a Government/Government employee/Rich person is at fault). And aunties also played a vital role as CCTV cameras throughout history, the way they will always be ready for interfering in the personal life of everyone. 

5] The fifth important aspect of this movie that drags one’s attention toward it, is Poverty. when the rich were thinking of a huge villa at the same time Tramp and his girlfriend were dreaming of food. Tramp represents Marxist theory.

6] Police arrested Tramp while he was holding a red flag unintentionally and police arrested him without confirming his crime. In today’s time also we can find many examples of this behavior for poor and helpless people. Salman Khan’s ‘Hit And Run’ case is the most relevant example.

The movie ends with an open road which shows Hope. The whole movie throws on a very detailed observation of Charlie Chaplin in the disguise of Tramp.

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