Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32593 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-06-01
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Formats: Black & White, PAL
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 83 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Modern Times marks the last proper appearance of Charles Chaplin's iconic Little Tramp, and finds our hero struggling to make ends meet in the Depression of the 1930s. Along the way he takes up with a juvenile delinquent (actually 24-year-old Paulette Goddard) and plays a prison incident with "nose powder" for drug-induced laughs--both plot elements seeming quite innocent here, though both would provoke controversy today. Modern Times' most famous sequences portray the dehumanisation of factory labour to fine comic effect, balancing satire with slapstick to perfection in several superbly executed set-pieces.

While the film has sound-effects and musical score, speech is only presented through mechanical means, via a gramophone, or through wall-sized TVs far more futuristic than in those in HG Wells' Things to Come (also 1936)--it's an interesting footnote that the comic and the SF visionary were friends. Chaplin famously not being a fan of sound cinema acknowledges the need to move with the times, yet hilariously spoofs the exploitation of man and machine while doing so. Amid some great laughs, the political message comes though clearly: the boss is making a fortune while doing jigsaw puzzles in his luxury office, the workers are toiling ever harder on the production line for their pittance.

On the DVD: Modern Times is offered in the original 4:3 black and white with good mono sound evidencing just a little distortion and a very clean, clear picture with minimal grain to give away its age. Also included are French and Italian dubbed versions and a pointless and ineffective English Dolby Digital 5.1 version of the soundtrack. The disc features multiple subtitle options, including English for hard of hearing.

Disc Two begins with a six-minute introduction by David Robinson. Next comes a very worthwhile 26-minute documentary by Philippe Truffault, Chaplin Today, centred around a perceptive subtitled discussion between French filmmakers Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne. There are three trailers, beautifully reproduced posters, an eight-part photo gallery and one entertaining deleted scene, as well as Chaplin's "nonsense song" from the film in isolated form and in a "Karaoke" version. The Documents section begins with a silent 42-minute 1931 documentary/propaganda film, In the Machine Age made by the US Dept of Labor. Along similar but more entertaining lines is Symphony in F a 1940 colour film combining music, manufacturing footage and animation celebrating the Ford motor company, while also included is a sequence from the Liberace Show (1956) with the star performing the vocal version of "Smile", the theme from Modern Times. Demonstrating the truly universal appeal of Chaplin is a 1967 short For the First Time, documenting what happens when the people of the remote Baracoa mountains in Cuba see their first ever movie, Modern Times. This is a remarkable collection which does a great film justice. --Gary S Dalkin

DVD Description
One of the happiest and most light-hearted of the Chaplin pictures. Man vs. machine! And the winner is every comedy fan when Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp confronts assembly line woes in this classic chosen in 1998 as one of the American Film Institute’s Top-100 American Films.

The Little Tramp punches in and wigs out inside a factory where gizmos like an employee feeding machine may someday make the lunch hour last just 15 minutes. Bounced into the ranks of the unemployed, he teams with a street waif (Pauline Goddard) to pursue bliss and a paycheck, finding misadventures as a roller-skating night watchman, a singing waiter whose hilarious song is gibberish, a jailbird and more. In the end, as tramp and waif walk arm in arm into an insecure future we know they’ve found neither bliss nor a paycheck but, more importantly, each other. The times and satire remain timeless in Modern Times.

Special Features
Region 2

Customer Reviews

First Class
As a child growing up I had always dismissed Chaplin as being a division below other Black and White legends such as 'Laurel and Hardy' or 'Buster Keaton'. Somehow Chaplin never quite caught my imagination until one Saturday evening the BBC showed 'Modern Times' and I had the cobwebs of ignorance blown away in one fell swoop. I went on to watch the rest of the BBC's screenings over the following weeks and came to realise what a true genius Charlie was. Modern Times is visually brilliant, from the opening hilarity of the automatic food dispensing machine going wrong to other highlights such as his wrongful arrest and imprisonment (and accidentally taking cocaine) plus attempting to take a dip outside his little dream house, the comic timing is perfection. Over the years I've shown this film to a number of friends and I've yet to hear a negative remark. This is a masterclass in visual comedy, you will not be disappointed.

Chaplin's Modern Times speaks to us today
Chaplin's observations on the dehumanising effect of mass production and technology without a human face are just as pertinent today as in 1936. Dial the telephone service line for your computer, and you feel like Charlie on his assembly line, having food pushed down his mouth by a robot. No-one has done it better.

Still modern
It's normal when reviewing Charlie Chaplin's films to apply the epithet `timeless.' `Modern Times' is a great example of this - though accused of luddism at the time for making a silent film in the infant age of talkies, Chaplin's masterful look at Fordism might take its context from the great depression, but has a universality in it's themes that transcends its setting. As such, it's a film that's easy to recommend to the modern viewer. Chaplin skewers mechanised industrialisation, shows the kind of empathy with the labour movement you would expect from the founder of United Artists, and highlights the brutality of the state when dealing with the poor and desperate. The physical comedy is performed with tremendous athleticism and skill, and is frequently undercut with a note of satire - for instance, the Little Tramp unable to prevent himself from continuing to perform the bolt-tightening movement he has been required to repeat ad infinitum whilst working on the production line. The set design of the factory, with it's vast, cog-driven machines that produce nothing, is striking. There is also a note of bitter satire directed towards the perceived requirement for dialogue in film - the film climaxes with Chaplin's long-awaited first vocal performance in a film. He sings nonsense and mimes the song's story. Chaplin is ably supported by Paulette Godard, who offers a feisty romantic interest for the Little Tramp. The film is a triumph, as relevant to our modern times as it was to Chaplin's, a genuinely funny work of slapstick with a bitter seam of black comedy running through it.

This two disc set presents the film on disc one, with the extras on disc two. The film is in it's original 4:3 aspect, and the picture is superb - so clear and clean it's hard to believe the footage is over 70 years old. As with the other Chaplin collection releases, there is no commentary on the film - a shame, as I would have welcomed a commentary by a film historian or Chaplin biographer. The extras on disc two are an intriguing mixed bag. The introduction to the extras by Chaplin biographer David Robinson is welcome, but far too brief. A documentary in which directors Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne discuss the film contains some interesting and thought-provoking perspectives. The deleted scene, in which The Little Tramp attempts to cross the road and discovers he is a lower priority than the model T's zooming past him, is very funny. There are also a handful of historical curios that, whilst not especially exciting in themselves, offer welcome context to Modern Times' release.

Overall, a fine release of an excellent film. If you're new to Chaplin, this is where to start.