Modern Times (1936, Charlie Chaplin) (Patreon)

76/100

At least third viewing, last seen 2004. I've always found this one oddly structured, opening with the Tramp already enmeshed (literally, per the film's most famous image) in mechanization, then shifting for a long stretch to various jail- and gamin(e)-related adventures with no particular claim to modernity (except insofar as poverty gets portrayed as the modern condition; still, hardly unusual circumstances for this character/persona, who's always been defined by lack), then returning him to the factory briefly only to see him get fired again, and finally wrapping up with grudging acknowledgment of the sound era via gibberish. Each individual sequence delights, but the trajectory feels more like a collection of loosely related shorts than do Chaplin's other features, even as the title informs us what we're meant to be thinking of thematically. I do admire his willingness to subvert convention by front-loading the proto-Tati gags, rather than reserving them for an ultra-zany climax, but it's at the expense of a wholly satisfying narrative. And it does kinda give the impression of a film peaking early—not having watched this in nearly 20 years, I was a bit flabbergasted to rediscover that the assembly line, the journey through the gears and the automated feeding machine all happen within the first 15 minutes. Though my favorite sequence remains the balletic rollerskating stunt, which looks only marginally less remarkable when you learn that the abyss into which the Tramp keeps nearly plunging is actually a glass matte. (The film's exemplary use of hanging miniatures is arguably more astonishing, and no less persuasive, than are contemporary digital "locations.") What Modern Times has over The Gold Rush and City Lights is a quasi-feral ingénue who resists bathos despite spending almost the entire movie barefoot in rags; Goddard makes the gamin(e) so wild-eyed and fierce, so fully a creature of reckless impulse, that it almost feels tragic when she eventually gets a proper job, as if she's been tamed by capitalism. All of the pieces that constitute a masterpiece are here; I'm just not convinced that they've been assembled to their best effect. Though there's no possible incorrect placement for censor-evading jokes (how?!) about the addled Tramp perceiving both male and female nipples as nuts to be tightened. This is before he goes on a cocaine-fueled rampage, incidentally. Pretty modern!