Modern Times: A funny way to see the “progress”

Modern Times, the movie, is an excellent representation of what was happening in those times of industry and hard work. People were treated as machines and there was typical to see strikes.

Charles Chaplin was the best silent comedian in Hollywood. This amazing actor represented in the movie how people were living in the time of modernity and such “progress” which was based on factory workers. In Modern Times Chaplin appears as a man who was working in a factory. His work consisted on a sequence work and essentially was like a routine. Men’s work, as we saw in the movie, every man in factories had a specific role and they had to do it perfectly.

As the humorist that Chaplin was, he really showed all this “progress” in a funny way. All his moves, the way he walked and how he worked in the factory were characteristics of the movie that maybe will interfere with the real problem people had in those times. I think that ironically Chaplin showed what they lived because of the price of progress. I think is good to have wishes of progress in a society but, what price do we want to pay? Unfortunately, people were machines and not real persons. All things were related to progress and if bosses had to treat their employees badly they will do it because the purpose was produce more, sell more and spend less, not paying attention of employees’ rights.

Anyway Chaplin made me have fun watching the movie. He was a distracted man and he had bad luck during the whole movie. When employees were in strike Chaplin went out of the street and because of confusion he was taken to jail. Despite this, when he was in jail he was better than outside, because he had helped police officers to catch a thug that wanted to escape from his cell. When he left prison he was unemployed and noticing that he wanted to go back to prison because there he had everything he needed. Charles also had found a girl he helped to escape and they were thinking of live together. It seems that have a home was the big dream and Charles knew he had to work to reach that dream.


I really like this movie and I definitely would recommend it, because I liked the way Chaplin represented and made laugh on a theme it is kind of impossible because of all the suffering people lived. I had never seen a silent movie before and less Chaplin’s movies but, I really like it.