Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Understanding the Zeitgeist of the 20th century: from Modern Times to the era of Great Dictator

 This blog i have written in a response of Thinking Activity. In this blog i am going to discuss about the important frames in Charles Chaplin's "Modern Times" and "The Great Dictator" 

"Modern Times"

Modern Times” is a silent black and white film, performed and directed by Charles Chaplin in 1936. The film is of both slapstick and satire, and is a socio-economic commentary on American society during the thirties, a period of rapid industrialization and the onset of the Great Depression. In the film, he plays a character known as the Tramp: a happy-go-lucky underdog, who does not quite understand society, and yet remains both cheerful and hopeful despite facing innumerable difficulty. In Modern Times, he portrays the reign of technology and society where humanity is forced to adjust to the machines and institutions of modern society, particularly with advent of the  Dream’ and the ‘pursuit of happiness’.

1931 Charles Chaplin told a newspaper interviewer :

“Unemployment is the vital question . . . Machinery should benefit mankind. It should not spell tragedy and throw it out of work.”

Chaplin, who was always very attentive to the economic and social problems of his day, declared in 1931: ‘unemployment, that’s the key question. Machines should do improve the well-being of humanity, instead of causing tragedy and unemployment”. 

 Ironically, the film opens with a cardboard on which is inscribed a bombastic sentence: “a story about the industry, individual initiative and the crusade of humanity in the pursuit of happiness”.

The significance of the first screen shows the time of 6 o'clock. And the time shows six o’clock is the time of leaving the factory/ industry.

Then the first frame of  sheep and second frames of fectory workers. Factories and mills were being equipped with new inventions of technology and machines were occupying the human jobs. Due to this unemployment, many people were roaming like sheep without direction.

Charlie is a factory worker in this hectic age. His job -mechanically tightening bolts on a moving belt. He crazy for his work.

This scene suggest that mind and money power is greater than muscles power.and that is best example of upper class fectory workers.

In his office, the President is shown a new aid to productivity - a method to shorten the lunch hour break and improve worker productivity. The sales pitch for a feeding machine is delivered by a mechanical salesman on a phonograph record:

a practical device which automatically feeds your men while at work. Don't stop for lunch. Be ahead of your competitor. The Billows feeding machine will eliminate the lunch hour, increase your production, and decrease your overhead.

The device is a mechanical, automated, aerodynamically-styled, silent feeding machine which features a revolving table, an automaton soup plate, an automatic food pusher, a revolving low and high gear corncob feeder, and a hydro-compressed sterilized mouth wipe. 

This film has a scene that depict great differences between social classes. There's a moment of parallelism between reality and a dream. A moment in which Chaplin and his partner are happily lying on the grass, then they saw a typical modern married couple. The man leaving home and going to work, and the wife staying house. They first joke and parody the situation, but then they dream about it. They imagine them in a real house, with food, comfort and all facilities. 

“Can you imagine us in a little home like that?” – Chapplin

Then they stop fantasizing and return to rude reality, they were homeless, without work, starving and alone.

this scene we see that Trump read newspaper that is news for fectory reopen and he thinks that new hope come his life and his dream come true.

After becoming free from jail a sheriff writes a recommendation letter, and on the basis of that letter he get a job at departmental store as a timekeeper. People are easily trust the letter. But present time people not easyly trust that type of letter and not give any job for workers.