Need some help finding the best things to watch on Netflix? Let our editors help you find what's trending and what's worth your time.
Doctors Jo Wilson, April Kepner, and Andrew DeLuca share the episodes they think are essential to understanding their characters.
Related lists from IMDb editors
Related lists from IMDb users
Title: Modern Times (1936)
Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.
| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Charles Chaplin | ... | A Factory Worker (as Charlie Chaplin) | |
| Paulette Goddard | ... | A Gamin | |
 |
Henry Bergman | ... | Cafe Proprietor |
| Tiny Sandford | ... | Big Bill (as Stanley Sandford) | |
| Chester Conklin | ... | Mechanic | |
| Hank Mann | ... | Burglar | |
| Stanley Blystone | ... | Gamin's Father | |
| Al Ernest Garcia | ... | President of the Electro Steel Corp. (as Allan Garcia) | |
| Richard Alexander | ... | Prison Cellmate (as Dick Alexander) | |
|
|
Cecil Reynolds | ... | Minister |
| Mira McKinney | ... | Minister's Wife (as Myra McKinney) | |
| Murdock MacQuarrie | ... | J. Widdecombe Billows (as Murdoch McQuarrie) | |
| Wilfred Lucas | ... | Juvenile Officer | |
| Edward LeSaint | ... | Sheriff Couler (as Ed Le Sainte) | |
| Fred Malatesta | ... | Cafe Head Waiter | |
Chaplin's last 'silent' film, filled with sound effects, was made when everyone else was making talkies. Charlie turns against modern society, the machine age, (The use of sound in films ?) and progress. Firstly we see him frantically trying to keep up with a production line, tightening bolts. He is selected for an experiment with an automatic feeding machine, but various mishaps leads his boss to believe he has gone mad, and Charlie is sent to a mental hospital - When he gets out, he is mistaken for a communist while waving a red flag, sent to jail, foils a jailbreak, and is let out again. We follow Charlie through many more escapades before the film is out. Written by Colin Tinto <cst@imdb.com>
Charles Chaplin seemingly had been pushed out of the movie business by the early-1930s due to the advent of sound (a medium that just never seemed right with him). Chaplin, probably the best film-maker/performer of the 20th Century, did not despair though. He fought back with heart and emotion and by 1936 "Modern Times" was a major box office and critical success. It is a movie that quietly showed a man suffering through a world of change. As a factory worker in the film, Chaplin tries to cope with the industrial revolution and tries to make it through a quickly changing U.S. economy. He finds love with vagrant Paulette Goddard (who ended up marrying Chaplin in real life) and the two come together and lean on one another in a world of uncertainty and change. "Modern Times" is one of those films that will put a smile on your face, but it could make you weep just as easily. Chaplin's world was changing (and not necessarily for the better from his point of view) and he wanted to express the variations in his old way of doing things and the new way everyone else had accepted. Goddard is also probably the best actress to match Chaplin's charm in one of his pictures. Their love for one another (even though the marriage lasted a relatively short amount of time in real life) just seems to shine on the silver screen and they have a chemistry that is sweet and heart-warming. Beautifully made, wonderfully written, perfectly performed, smart, insightful and always brilliant, "Modern Times" is another film from Chaplin that will brand itself on the souls of all true lovers of the cinema. 5 stars out of 5.