There is something fundamentally sad about Modern Times, by the very fact that it shows an unparalleled genius making his last move in the now-defunct art form with which he made his name. Charlie Chaplin, undisputed master of silent comedy, had managed to bluff his way through the awkward early days of sound, but by 1936 the talkie had got its act together, and screen comedy was dominated by the witty wordplay of the Marx brothers and the smart sass of screwball. Slapstick had all but lost its market, and the picture is saturated with a feel of "One last time
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nd Chaplin expresses his feelings with scathing satire. Modern Times is quite plainly a blast at many aspects of industrialised living, especially unemployment and Fordist production management. However the picture also takes several sly swipes at sound film itself. From the beginning, sound is associated with the mechanical, the authoritative, and the austere, with the few bits of spoken dialogue being via some piece of technology such as a radio or the boss's speaking tube. Sound effects too are reserved for nasty clanking and scraping sounds of machinery and things breaking apart. Finally there is Paulette Godard's pronouncement that "The words don't matter" as Charlie forgets the lyrics for his singing waiter act. Chaplin was of course very good at nonsense voices, as this and his Adenoid Hynkel act in The Great Dictator demonstrate, whereas meaningful verbal comedy was his Achilles Heel.
Despite all this vehemence, Chaplin is making one or two concessions to contemporary cinema. Modern Times features a lot more camera movement and close-ups than we see in his previous pictures, where he tended to stick to static long shots to preserve the best flow of physical comedy. The more technical approach here is always done for a reason – for example whip-panned close-ups are used for emphasis, and there is often a change of angle to punctuate a gag such as the half-built ship slipping out of dock. While they do draw attention to the funniest moments they disrupt the purity of the routine and are most likely concessions made by Chaplin for an audience not used to silent comedy. Modern Times is also much more variable and fast-paced than previous Chaplin features, skipping from factory to prison to department store and so on.
And yet, of all his feature films, Modern Times includes perhaps the most protracted bouts of silent comedy, far more than the story-driven City Lights. Despite its linking plot, the various settings in which the little tramp finds himself each provide fully-fledged slapstick routines, and there are very few moments in which point or poignancy are allowed to overrule the comedy. The picture is in some ways like a compendium of the non-stop gagging two-reelers he was making in the 1910s. Modern Times may not be quite the tearjerker that The Kid or City Lights were, but it is the master's final great showcase of his primary talent.
