Work

The first scene of Chaplin in this movie is of him drawing a carriage while his masters sit in the back as he tries to take them up a hill to amusing results. That's all you need to know to appreciate this treatise on work and the pains that man goes to achieve it. We all have to work to pay the bills, but the characters homes he visits in the movie don't have to work, the way he does, that is the hard labor of using one's hands and seem precarious of it. Chaplin loved to spoof the rich or the idle class as they are known. Maybe, he felt being born with a golden spoon is bad. There is nothing wrong with that. It's how one lives with such advantages and disposes of his willed upbringing that castigates the self. But not to Chaplin, who goes on to wreck havoc in a series of set pieces that ends with destruction and a wink to the camera; an act of farewell and goodbye. Is it farewell to work and a hooray for idleness, I cannot say but like a cartoon character who has preyed the deed, he takes us along and makes us laugh, even if I do not agree with his accusations.