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Modern Times (2 Disc Special Edition)
Warner Home Video Product Details |
Product Description
Man vs. machine! And the winner is every comedy fan when Charlie Chaplin's Tramp confronts assembly-line woes in this classic chosen in 1998 as one of the American Film Institute's Top-100 American Films. The Little Tramp punches in and wigs out inside a factory where gizmos like an employee-feeding machine may someday make the lunch hour last just 15 minutes. Bounced into the ranks of the unemployed he teams with a street waif (Paulette Goddard) to pursue bliss and a paycheck finding misadventures as a roller-skating night watchman a singing waiter whose hilarious song is gibberish a jailbird and more. In the end as Tramp and waif walk arm and arm into an insecure future we know they've found neitherbliss nor a paycheck but more importantly each other. The times and satire remain timeless in Modern Times.Running Time: 83 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 085393765125
Amazon.com essential video
Charlie Chaplin is in glorious form in this legendary satire of the mechanized world. As a factory worker driven bonkers by the soulless momentum of work, Chaplin executes a series of slapstick routines around machines, including a memorable encounter with an automatic feeding apparatus. The pantomime is triumphant, but Chaplin also draws a lively relationship between the Tramp and a street gamine. She's played by Paulette Goddard, then Chaplin's wife and probably his best leading lady (here and in The Great Dictator). The film's theme gave the increasingly ambitious writer-director a chance to speak out about social issues, as well as indulging in the bittersweet quality of pathos that critics were already calling "Chaplinesque." In 1936, Chaplin was still holding out against spoken dialogue in films, but he did use a synchronized soundtrack of sound effects and his own music, a score that includes one of his most famous melodies, "Smile." And late in the film, Chaplin actually does speak--albeit in a garbled gibberish song, a rebuke to modern times in talking pictures. --Robert Horton
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Modern Times (2 Disc Special Edition)
- DVD: 0 pages (2003-07-01)
- Publisher: Warner Home Video
- Label: Warner Home Video
- Starring: Richard Alexander, Henry Bergman, Stanley Blystone, Chester Conklin, Gloria DeHaven
- Encoding: Region 1
- Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD-Video, Original recording remastered, Subtitled, NTSC
- Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1,
- Rated: Unrated
- Studio: Warner Home Video
- DVD Release Date: 2003-07-01
- Run Time: 165
- ISBN: 0790771683
- Average Customer Review:
 based on 60 reviews
- Sales Rank in DVD: #9804
Avg. Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: black and white classic 2008-09-26
Comment: Modern times. I saw this because it was chosen as one of the best of the century. Charlie Chaplin had a sort of magic with film and it shows in this one.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: A brilliant silent comedy 2008-08-03
Comment: "Modern Times" is one of Charlie Chaplin's most memorable films. In this movie, the Tramp joins the ranks of the unemployed, and eventually teams up with a poor girl (Paulette Goddard) who's trying to make her way in the world. Like all Chaplin films, "Modern Times" features numerous slapstick routines that are just as funny today as they were 80 years ago when this film was made. This is one of the first Chaplin films that uses recorded sound effects and even some spoken dialogue in the form of a nonsense song, which was Chaplin's way of lashing out at talking motion pictures. Chaplin also composed the score to this movie, which includes "Smile," one of Chaplin's most famous songs. This is a truly fantastic film that people will continue to enjoy for many years to come.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Chaplin's Best 2008-07-27
Comment: This is the best film of Chaplin's that I watch many times over. You can't get any better than this. Love the button scene and the dept. store skating. Fantastic!
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazing. 2007-06-26
Comment: Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936)
I've spent the past few decades assiduously overlooking old film comedies, mostly because of my dislike for the contemporary comedy shorts (the Three Stooges, the Little Rascals, et al.). I decided earlier this year that I was going to stop doing that; after all, they can't all be that bad. One of the earliest stops on this new journey of mine was Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin's 1936 extravaganza that makes it into critics' 100-best lists with almost alarming regularity.
The basic idea is that Chaplin, a factory worker, and Paulette Goddard, a homeless waif, team up after Chaplin gets laid off when the factory closes (it's the Depression, remember) and try to make their way in the world. This leads both through a succession of jobs (and a rickety homestead), as well as more than one brush with the law.
I know there's a great deal of social commentary to be found here; I've read more than enough articles on the film to have missed that. But my mind is a sieve, and I can't remember terribly much about those articles. What I found important, and enjoyable, about the film is that it's a wonderfully-choreographed piece, a remnant of the silent era in the age of talkies (there is very little actual speech in the film), and an excellent showcase for Chaplin's talent for physical comedy. Add to this the eye-popping beauty of Paulette Goddard, a pitch-perfect sense of pace, and an array of sets that rivals most of what gets turned out seventy years later, and you have the recipe for a truly classic film. And Modern Times surely is that. **** ½
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Funny. 2007-04-10
Comment: Good laughs. My favorite scene is that with the feeding machine. Even my boyfriend who hates old black and white movies was laughing out loud. Genius.
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