January’s film, Modern Times, is a comedy… but one with a dagger pointed straight into the heart of our industrial society. Only Charlie Chaplin could play a soul, who’s struggling to live free in a machine age that is binding him to endless repetition, in a job where workers are reduced to machines. This is Chaplin’s first sound film and, in my opinion, his finest. However, though he uses sound, we never hear his voice. Somehow, this heightens the emotion of what we are watching. Coincidentally, Chaplin composed all of the music for Modern Times.
Chaplin’s co-star is a young Paulette Goddard who we recently spotlighted in a film with Bob Hope. Chaplin and Goddard worked so well together that they married when the film “wrapped.”
Modern Times will screen at Old City Hall on Friday, January 16th, 2015 at 7:00pm. Doors will open at 6:30pm.