Never Say Die

Modern Times, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin, is a movie of visual extremes. By creating extremes of behavior, many of the situations become absurdist and lead to humorous outcomes that are visually self-explanatory. The movie is also a deeper meditation on the nature of the social changes sweeping through American culture in the early part of the 20th century. It is the fluid and jovial reactions of Chaplin that turn the somewhat horrific vision of the modern world into a series of funny events.

In the first scenes, a comparison between sheep and workers streaming into a factory makes the film maker's view clear and sets the stage for the primary character, the factory worker, being herded through life. The factory itself is an unlikely clean place, with technologies that would not be out of place in a factory today. The President of the company is able to see everywhere in the factory with a hawk like gaze. He too is shown to be a regular human being, piecing together a puzzle in his office, as an individual pursuing his own form of happiness.

The factory worker, played by Chaplin,  is performing an inhuman task, over and over again, and it consumes him. When stopping work, he continues to jerk and twitch the same motions as when performing his job. While his motions are comical and exaggerated, they are also sinister when considering our current understanding of repetitive stress injuries.

Between shifts, he is locked into a mechanical feeding machine. While the machine fails and the President of the company dismisses the technicians who presented it to him, it is obvious that if the machine were "practical", he would have no problem using it on his employees to limit the amount of time they are not performing their jobs. It is Chaplin's responses to the machine that humanize it, taking it from the realm of a claustrophobic nightmare and turning it into an laugh out loud folly.

 After the effects of his repetitive work situation lead him to a nervous breakdown, rampaging through the factory fiddling with valves and levers in a comical way; the factory worker recovers in a mental hospital but is swept up by police just after release, mistakenly believing him to be the leader of a communist march. In jail, the worker finds peace and is comfortable. He is once again in a herd, and in many ways is even more controlled than he was as a factory worker.

During this period, the gamin or street urchin is introduced, a character played by Paulette Goddard. She is shown desperately surviving by stealing food for herself, her family and other poor children. She is presented in a romantic way, as a pirate, knife between teeth, easily confusing and getting away from a dock worker trying to stop her.

The good nature of the worker inadvertently gets him out of jail, after he foils a jail breakout. It is interesting to see drugs, nose-powder, depicted in a film that was released in 1936.  This was just 3 years after the introduction of the "code" in Hollywood movies in an effort to limit themes in movies that were acceptable to Roman Catholic mores. This drug helps put the worker into a position to block the jail break attempt.

After being rewarded with release form jail for his good deeds, the worker and the gamin meet, while he is now trying to be put back into jail, he helps her avoid being put into jail. It is through this and being on the run together that they start to form a bond that leads to love by the end of the movie.

They fantasize about having a life together in a nice house and this requires the factory worker to find a new job to pay for it. He does so, working for a department store as a night watchman. During the evening, he invites the gamin into the store to be comfortable, and then burglars appear in the store, accidentally forcing the worker to drink rum until he passes out.

Now he goes back to jail but is not satisfied to stay there. When he comes out, the gamin has found a dilapidated home.  One that is in no way modern and yet, the couple is happy.

The rest of the film covers essentially the same ground. Both the worker and the gamin are trying to work their way through the world, and are failing, not always through their own fault, but through forces that are out of their control; a large crowd in a dining hall blocking the factory worker's path. The gamin being swept up by police to be returned to an orphanage.

In the end, they seem destitute and alone on an empty road. However, the worker won't let that keep them down.