Times is Hard on the Boulevard

In the silent film “Modern Times”, Charlie Chaplin, is depicted as your average, working class, guy during the harsh conditions of the great depression. This is the first silent film I’ve watched and I never knew how well a silent film could portray underlying social conditions of a particular time and place in history. The way the director presented industrialization in America and turned it in to a humorous story, while still capturing the cold harsh mood of this time period was brilliant.

The opening scene of the movie says it all. In the opening few scenes Charlie Chaplin, is a worker on an assembly line in a steel factory. He is frequently falling behind in the line while being harassed by his boss and one of the co workers next to him who is hammering the metal objects as they fly on the speedy conveyor belt. Charlie Chaplin’s goofy antics make a depressing situation quite funny while still exhibiting the grueling and physical strains of working in factories during industrialization. This notion is emphasized when the line stops, and Charlie Chaplin’s begins developing a uncontrollable, wrench twisting, twitch. I thought this scene was very important, setting the tone in which the rest of the movie would follow. In the film the man eventually goes on, having and mental break down, losing jobs left and right, and is thrown in and out of jail, a place which he believes to be a “relief” from the cold world outside. He eventually meets a girl, running off with her in pursuit of peace, love, and happiness.

This film really grasps environment of its time and space, and is a very important artifact in American history.