Where to watch Modern Times (1936)

Trivia & production notes

• Chaplin drew inspiration for the film from his European tour promoting City Lights, where he witnessed Depression-era hardship and discussed modern technology with Mahatma Gandhi.
• Chaplin initially wrote Modern Times as his first talkie with full dialogue, but abandoned the approach after experimenting with sound, convinced that the Little Tramp would lose universal appeal if he spoke.
• The film was shot at 18 frames per second, then projected at 24 frames per second, making the slapstick sequences appear more energetic than they actually were.
• The famous blindfolded skating scene used matte painting for the cliff edge, and Chaplin actually skated on a plain floor while the dangerous drop was an optical illusion.
• Chaplin composed the score himself with assistance from Alfred Newman, who worked with him on City Lights, though the two had a falling out during the Modern Times recording sessions.
• The romance theme from Modern Times became the pop standard "Smile," first recorded by Nat King Cole.
• Chaplin performed a comedic French song called "Je cherche après Titine" in the film, marking the first time audiences heard his voice in a movie.
• Nazi Germany's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels banned Modern Times from being shown because he believed it advocated communism.
• The film's assembly-line sequence inspired later comedy routines including a Disney cartoon where Donald Duck juggles weapons and a famous I Love Lucy episode with Lucy and Ethel struggling to keep pace with a conveyor belt of chocolates.
• French philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty named their philosophical journal Les Temps modernes after the film.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Modern Times (film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.