Modern Times
Special Screening - Ajyal Youth Film Festival 2015
Charlie Chaplin / Feature Narrative / United States of America / 1936 / 87 min / Black & White / Bluray / In English / (No Subtitles) subtitles / N/A
Rated: Parental guidance is advised. Some material may be inappropriate for young children.
Synopsis
With his bowler hat, cane and little moustache, Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp is one of the most beloved characters in the history of cinema. In ‘Modern Times’, the Tramp’s mind-numbing assembly-line job drives him to a nervous breakdown, which plunges the factory into hilarious chaos as Chaplin performs his flawlessly timed slapstick antics.
After he recovers, he has his health but no job. In the wrong place at the wrong time – as the Tramp so often is – he is mistakenly rounded up at a political rally and held in prison. After some high jinks behind bars, he is set free and soon meets a beautiful homeless girl when he gallantly takes the fall for her after she is caught stealing bread. The two misfits try to make a new life together by getting jobs and fixing up a small shack to call home. Leaving their troubled pasts behind is easier said than done, however, and once again the pair find themselves fleeing the police.
A master of subversive comedy, Chaplin tackled social issues by making audiences roar with laughter – and his comic genius lives on to this day.
About the Director
Charlie Chaplin was born in London in 1889 and over the course of his career would become one of the most celebrated and admired filmmakers in the history of cinema. His early comical onscreen success at Mack Sennett’s Keystone Films led to international acclaim; he went on to launch United Artists with his contemporaries Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith. Among his iconic films – all of which he wrote, directed, produced and starred in, are ‘The Kid’ (1921), ‘City Lights’ (1931), ‘Modern Times’ (1936) and ‘The Great Dictator’ (1940). Chaplin died in 1977.
Credits
- Director
- Charlie Chaplin
- Screenwriter
- Charlie Chaplin
- Producer
- Charlie Chaplin
- Editor
- Williard Nico
- Cinematographer
- Ira H. Morgan, Roland Totheroh
- Sales Company
- MK2
- Production Company
- Charles Chaplin Productions
- Cast
- Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Stanley Sandford, Chester Conklin