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  • DAVID THORBURN: This lecture tonight is our last chance

  • to pay attention to this process I've been calling the Fred Ott

  • principal.

  • And forgive me for appearing slightly repetitious

  • about this.

  • But to me, it's an essential aspect

  • of our appreciation of these early weeks,

  • to recognize that films like The General, or Modern Times,

  • or the film we're going to see next week, The Last Laugh,

  • Murnau's remarkable silent film from Germany,

  • to recognize that these astonishing, complex narratives

  • grew out of something so primitive

  • and grew out of something so primitive in such a

  • relatively short time, is part of what

  • makes these early films so interesting.

  • And the viewing you're going to see tonight

  • is your last opportunity to, in a concrete way,

  • experience something of that process,

  • something of that evolution for yourself.

  • Because the two Chaplain shorts that you're

  • going to see, while they are, as I indicated this afternoon, not

  • from the earliest stages of Chaplin's work,

  • they're three or four years advanced beyond that.

  • He's already mastered his medium in certain ways.

  • And these shorts are, in themselves,

  • very coherent and interesting works.

  • And I hope you'll look at them for their own intrinsic value.

  • But I also want you to recognize,

  • as you think about those short films, remarkable as they are,

  • how much richer, how much more complex,

  • how much more demanding and rewarding in many ways

  • Modern Times is.

  • And I think the same thing could be said about all

  • of Chaplin's features.

  • There's an astonishing distance between even the best

  • shorts or between most of the best shorts and the features.

  • Some of the very best shorts have

  • a kind of elegance and purity, as well as

  • a level of comic inventiveness that

  • makes them in their own way almost

  • the equal of the features.

  • But, of course, even the best of them

  • don't have quite the reach or the resonance

  • of a film like Modern Times or The Gold Rush.

  • One way we can perhaps clarify some of what I've been saying,

  • and maybe also do a bit more justice

  • to poor Buster Keaton, who I think in many ways is

  • an equally remarkable artist and in a technical sense

  • an even more interesting director than Chaplain himself,

  • is to begin with a comparison of the two.

  • Not so much because the comparison will really

  • illuminate weaknesses in one or the other,

  • but the contrast between them I think

  • will help to clarify what are some

  • of the essential qualities in each of these director's

  • work in films.

  • And I hope that you'll sort of think back

  • to the Keaton material you saw last week as I'm

  • making these comparisons.

  • One way to think about the differences between Chaplin

  • and Keaton, and also to think about what

  • is essential about both of them, is

  • to talk about the way they deal with objects and the role

  • that objects have in their films.

  • In Keaton's case, we might say that the basic objects

  • of interest are usually massive and gigantic things,

  • whole houses, locomotives, as in The General,

  • an ocean liner as in The Navigator.

  • And Keaton was interested in intricate systems

  • and in the intricacy with which these systems operated.

  • And he liked to pose his Buster character

  • against these massive systems, to see whether Buster could

  • survive them and to show us certain aspects,

  • both of Buster's resourcefulness and power

  • to muddle through, but also his comic inadequacy

  • and comic failings as well.

  • And a number of the most dramatic and famous bits

  • from The General could be said to crystallize this principle.

  • Think of that magnificent joke.

  • It's more than a joke.

  • That cosmic joke, that vision of experience,

  • that existential mockery, but also

  • affectionate mockery of human nature, that's

  • embedded in the cannon sequence at the very beginning

  • of Keaton's most important film.

  • You remember how that works.

  • It's very funny at every level.

  • But as Keaton first fails to fire the cannon,

  • then the second time reloads the cannon

  • with 10 times as much powder, then

  • gets stuck in front of the cannon

  • and it looks as if he's going to be shot.

  • But every move in that sequence is

  • full of amusing comic business.

  • But think of how as the joke builds,

  • as it keeps topping itself, something else

  • begins to happen.

  • What begins to emerge, as I suggested last time,

  • is almost a kind of vision of life, a vision of life

  • in which human agency matters.

  • You do have to struggle and do what

  • you can to try to save yourself or accomplish your ends.

  • But then when your ends are accomplished,

  • even when things work out almost exactly as you had planned,

  • remember what happen.

  • The cannon does fire.

  • It doesn't shot at poor Buster, who runs away from it and hides

  • in the cowcatcher of the engine to avoid it.

  • But why doesn't it go?

  • Because at a certain moment, the train

  • just happens to go around the bend and geography and physics

  • collaborate with the Keaton character

  • in order to create a shot that actually does almost

  • hit the engine he's pursuing.

  • And it certainly persuades the people

  • he's pursuing that they are being

  • chased by more than one man.

  • And, in fact, remember when the cannon fires

  • and we see that the outcome that results is pretty

  • much the outcome that the Buster character intended,

  • there's a double comedy there, isn't there?

  • And it's a metaphysical or an existential comedy.

  • Because what that joke is saying is, of course, what

  • the whole film also says and what

  • many other individual crescendo jokes, we might call them,

  • also say in the film.

  • Which is that we get through in life by muddling through,

  • by working hard, by engaging in all kinds of sometimes almost

  • obsessive labor in order to accomplish our ends.

  • But in the end, when we do accomplish our ends,

  • it's not entirely because of us.

  • It's because of accident.

  • And when we don't accomplish our ends,

  • it's also because of accident often, as well as

  • because of our human frailty.

  • So there really is a kind of complex understanding

  • of the world implicit in the kinds of jokes

  • that Keaton manages to tell us, as if there's

  • a sort of understanding or interpretation

  • of life embedded in the best moments of The General.

  • And this kind of vision of experience

  • wouldn't really be possible if Keaton

  • was as interested in individual encounters with small objects

  • as Chaplain is.

  • Because the distinction between Keaton and Chaplain

  • in terms of the way they use objects

  • is that Chaplain is in love not with large, gigantic

  • structures, but with tiny ones.

  • He wants to see how Charlie manipulates his cane.

  • He wants to watch Charlie interact with a hamburger

  • or with a shoe that he is pretending is a turkey dinner,

  • in a fragment from a late film of his

  • that I'm going to show you I hope in a few moments.

  • So if objects in Keaton are massive and systemic

  • in a certain way, the objects that

  • are most characteristic of Chaplin's world

  • are small and manageable.

  • And the interactions between the Chaplain character

  • and these objects are often an occasion for the exploration

  • of character.

  • When the Tramp character encounters a particular object,

  • one of the things he is characteristically tempted

  • to do is to transform its use, is to make it useful

  • some other purpose.

  • As if in the contest between Charlie and the world,

  • Charlie has some transcendent power

  • to allow his optimism to transform

  • a recalcitrant reality, to make the reality kind of bend

  • to him.

  • And it becomes especially poignant,

  • as you'll see in the passage from The Gold Rush I'm going

  • to show you in a little while.

  • It becomes especially poignant when

  • we understand how minimal are the constellations that Charlie

  • finds.

  • When he transforms this shoe into a turkey dinner,

  • he's actually starving.

  • And although it may psychologically help him out,

  • we can see his resilience facing hunger and making

  • the shoe do for a meal.

  • So what is expressed there is something of the character's

  • imaginativeness, but also something

  • of his resilience and optimism.

  • Because when he encounters the world, his relation to it

  • is one of a magician or a transformer.

  • He's always trying to impose his imagination on the world.

  • And if you watch Chaplin's films--

  • this is true of his shorts as well as his longer films--

  • if you watch Chaplin's interactions with objects

  • closely, you will see a continual drama

  • in which the imaginative world of the Tramp

  • is in some sense in a kind of conflict,

  • or a kind of collision, or at least

  • a kind of angry conversation with the world in which

  • the objects of the world are, although they may resist,

  • are constantly under the pressure

  • of the transformative power of Charlie's optimism,

  • resilience, and imagination.

  • So it's small objects in Chaplain that matter.

  • And they declare for character, rather than

  • for some cosmic understanding of the world.

  • We can get at another fundamental difference

  • and some of the strengths and the alternate kinds

  • of strengths of both Keaton and Chaplin

  • by talking about the different protagonists or heroes that are

  • characteristic of their works.

  • In Chaplin's case, let's start with Chaplain,

  • we often have heroes who have grand visions, or schemes,

  • or hopes.

  • They tend to be chivalric characters.

  • So sometimes the project they take on is rescue the damsel,

  • protect the woman.

  • In the first feature-length film or nearly feature-length film

  • that Chaplin made-- it was a film called The Kid.

  • And it actually involves a child.

  • The kid of the title is a young boy, an urchin, very much

  • like the real Chaplain in his childhood in London.

  • And the Tramp character, who is himself starving,

  • encounters the kid and has to protect him.

  • So it's actually a story of maternal--

  • there's a maternal quality to Charlie in this.

  • He's much more like a mother than he's like a father.

  • But anyway, it's in a certain sense a kind of sentimental

  • parenting fable, in which we see starving, miserable,

  • down-at-the-heels Charley defending a person who's even

  • more vulnerable and even weaker, even less able to take care

  • of himself than Charlie is.

  • And although it is a deeply sentimental film in many ways,

  • it also was a film that provides another occasion in which we

  • can see the Tramp character's imaginativenes operating.

  • Because as I suggested this afternoon,

  • one way you can also see it operating in chase sequences

  • because he makes such amazing split second decisions

  • about how to elude his pursuers.

  • And often those decisions reveal his intelligence

  • and his improvisatory quickness.

  • So almost everything that happens in a Chaplain film

  • returns in some sense to our sense of the Tramp's character.

  • And we feel that especially strongly I think in The Kid

  • because one of the things that happen--

  • I think The Kid is 1921.

  • And one of the things that happens in The Kid

  • is that we see Charlie exceeding himself

  • in imaginative resourcefulness because he now

  • has to protect a child.

  • And what you feel is that his compassion

  • and his protective instincts mobilize a resourcefulness

  • and an intelligence that you can't help but recognize

  • and you can't help but see.

  • And so that in a certain sense, there's a grand scheme here,

  • protect a child, save a child's life, or protect an orphan,

  • or protect a young damsel in distress

  • from bandits and outlaws, that sort of thing.

  • And then Chaplain himself, the character himself,

  • often has grandiose visions of wealth or of success.

  • Some of his films, as in Modern Times,

  • include dream sequences or fantasy sequences, very, very

  • clever, intelligent sequences.

  • Because you can tell that they are taking

  • place in a subjective realm, itself

  • a kind of thematic and technical advance

  • in the making of movies.

  • That Chaplin found ways to introduce images

  • that the audience would recognize instantly

  • as taking place, not in the real world,

  • but in the subjective life of the characters as part

  • of his achievement as much as a mature director.

  • So the Chaplain hero is often an ambitious character,

  • although he often fails.

  • He has large ambitions.

  • He has chivalric tendencies.

  • He's hopeful, resilient, in many ways grandiose and sentimental.

  • And the Keaton character couldn't

  • be more opposite in some ways.

  • He has sometimes been called wrongly the great stone face.

  • But he's a character who sort of muddles through

  • without any grand schemes.

  • The Keaton character usually isn't

  • trying to do anything more.

  • The largest thing he ever tries to do

  • is impress a woman, as he does in Cops.

  • Mostly what he's just trying to do

  • is survive, get through the day, get around the corner,

  • keep this ship from sinking, keep this locomotive

  • on the track.

  • One might even say that in The General, which

  • is his most grandiose plan in all of Keaton's films,

  • what the Buster character does in The General is the most

  • ambitious and remarkable.

  • He's going to recapture his train.

  • He's chasing the Union army as if he's

  • fighting the war on his own.

  • But it's important to realize how

  • we're supposed to understand that in a deeply comic way

  • because the Keaton character is so wedded to his engine that's

  • really not thinking about any more marshal victory

  • or winning the war.

  • What he wants to do is recover his engine.

  • So even there, there's a kind of smallness,

  • a kind of lack of ambition, a lack of grandiosity

  • to what the Keaton character is doing.

  • So he wants to just survive and do

  • a task, again a very sharp contrast.

  • The treatment of women, a third category,

  • might be a way of seeing them in sharp distinction

  • to each other.

  • Chaplin's treatment of women is deeply

  • sentimental and chivalric.

  • They're almost always, with the partial exception of Modern

  • Times-- and I'll talk about that briefly

  • in a moment-- they're almost always treated sentimentally

  • and as characters who need protection,

  • who are weak and vulnerable, as well as beautiful

  • and stand for some kind of purity.

  • They are an inheritance or a vestige of the Victorian ideal

  • of women.

  • They were put on pedestals because they

  • were too pure for the world.

  • And they were also too weak to open doors for themselves.

  • They had to have men do that for them.

  • So Chaplain's female characters, with the partial exception,

  • dramatically partial exception of the gamin in the film you're

  • going to see tonight, tend to be of this sort,

  • Victorian stereotypes.

  • And his treatment of them is deeply sentimental.

  • If you think about the treatment of the heroine in The General,

  • you'll see how dramatically Keaton diverges from this view.

  • Remember, Keaton is not making fun of women in that.

  • He's making fun of the Victorian stereotype of women

  • that appears in so many movies.

  • So when the Keaton character picks up

  • that woman when she's hiding in the potato sack

  • and throws over his shoulders, and throws her

  • onto the pile as if she's another sack of potatoes,

  • or later in the film when the Keaton heroin

  • begins to do such stupid things that you begin

  • to realize that she is one of the great airheads

  • in the history of movies.

  • Do you remember some of the tricks she pulls?

  • Like she ties a willow tree across the tracks.

  • She tries a rope across the tracks

  • to stop the next train from catching up with them.

  • Or she sweeps out-- do you remember this business-- where

  • she sweeps out in the cabin of the engine

  • while poor Buster is struggling to keep the engine going?

  • She doesn't like a little bit of soot on the floor.

  • Keaton makes fun of this figure.

  • But he's not making fun of women.

  • He's not making fun of actual living females.

  • He's making fun of the stereotype of women

  • that appears not only in the movies,

  • but also appears in sort of the popular conception of what

  • women are.

  • In any case, we can see how deeply

  • mocking and unsentimental Keaton's treatment of women is.

  • One final contrast that I think is helpful and interesting

  • might be the contrast that we might

  • generate if we tried to describe the visual style

  • of each director.

  • Chaplin favors close shots and emphasizes character.

  • He aims for a totally realistic style

  • in which you're oblivious to the camera's presence.

  • You're not supposed to think about the camera.

  • He wants to create a camera that is as transparent as possible.

  • You're supposed to just focus on the action.

  • Chaplain's idea is that his camera is a window on reality.

  • And he doesn't want the window or the window pane

  • to be part of your understanding of what you're watching.

  • There's something social and character-oriented

  • in Chaplin's visual style and especially

  • in his preference for closeups which reveal

  • the psychology of character.

  • The contrast with Keaton is very dramatic.

  • Keaton is a more interesting director in a technical sense.

  • He'll mix his shots much more often.

  • He'll use closeups.

  • But he also loves long shots and middle shots,

  • depending on the effect he's looking for.

  • If you think about what a master he is of the long shot,

  • think of the moment, for example, in The General

  • where the camera backs up far enough

  • so that we can see Buster working furiously

  • on the car that carries the wood, the wood

  • carrier on his train, working furiously with his head down,

  • while we see the train move across the battle line.

  • So that he ends up in enemy territory

  • and he doesn't even know it.

  • So there's a kind of cosmic joke.

  • And again, it's a joke that's only possible in the movies.

  • I mean it's a joke that partly depends upon the camera's

  • position, its power to photograph motion,

  • and the fact that it can encompass

  • a much larger mise-en-scene that is ever

  • possible in a live theater.

  • So it's a technically interesting achievement.

  • But it's also a morally interesting achievement

  • because what does it dramatize?

  • The usual trick, the usual thing we know

  • about the Buster character.

  • He's mostly oblivious to the dangers around him.

  • And often the comedy in Keaton comes from the fact

  • that he's oblivious to his narrow escapes,

  • as we've said before.

  • So Keaton uses mixed shots.

  • He's much more interested in creating an aura

  • of authenticity in his filming.

  • The General especially alludes to documentary photography

  • made during the Civil War.

  • And some of the images are actually

  • recreations of Matthew Brady photographs,

  • very famous Matthew Brady photographs.

  • It was very important for Keaton to create

  • these realistic effects, this sense of realism,

  • because so many of his most magnificent jokes

  • depend on your recognition that it's actually happening.

  • That he's not using process shots.

  • Think of, for example, of the unbelievable engineering

  • feat that was involved in the final crash of the train, when

  • the bridge burns at the end of The General.

  • Remember, there's no digital animation then.

  • When Keaton did that, if he didn't get on the camera

  • the first time, that was it.

  • And, in fact, it's incredibly beautifully done,

  • It happens perfectly.

  • There's something almost graceful

  • about that catastrophic sequence.

  • It's so well done, in fact, it even holds up today in an era

  • when we are so used to special effects of a much more

  • dramatic and astonishing kind.

  • There are no special effects in that sequence.

  • It depended on a mastery of knowing

  • where to put the camera; a kind of engineer's mastery

  • of various individuals and machines

  • that were in motion at the same time; perfect timing, so

  • that the bridge had to actually burn down

  • at just the right moment for the train to come over it.

  • There was no margin for error there.

  • Again and again, Keaton's comedy shows

  • us this level of technical, as well as

  • intellectual or thematic mastery.

  • Because, of course, that moment when

  • the train crashes into the canyon

  • isn't just a magnificent visual moment

  • and a magnificently comic thwarting

  • of the expectations of the generals

  • who are running the thing.

  • But that moment is also completely

  • consistent with the mock heroic interests,

  • the mock heroic themes of the movie as a whole.

  • And what I'd like to do now is concretize

  • and embody the arguments I've been making very briefly

  • and inadequately by having you look at three scenes, one

  • from Keaton, two from Chaplain, that can help ground what I've

  • been saying in particular images, in particular moments.

  • The first scene is a scene that I wanted to show you last week

  • and didn't have time.

  • I think of it in a certain sense as a particularly clear

  • embodiment of what we might call the Keaton vision.

  • And it's a sequence that violates

  • one of Keaton's deepest principles at the very end.

  • And I'm a little sorry it does.

  • And the sequence is harmed by that.

  • There is a special effect in it.

  • And it's too bad that there is.

  • But it's one of the very rare such moments in Keaton.

  • Keaton tried never to do that.

  • And as I mentioned to you, sometimes very dangerous things

  • happen to Keaton.

  • And they happen in reality.

  • And he was often begged, when he became a director of features,

  • to not do his own stunts.

  • But he always refused.

  • And he always did his own stunts.

  • He broke his neck when he was making The General.

  • And any continued filming with a broken neck

  • for part of the time.

  • He didn't quite realize how seriously he

  • was injured when that happened.

  • If you think back to The General,

  • you might actually be able to figure out--

  • it happens relatively early in the film when he hurt himself.

  • When he's on the hand car, when he's

  • chasing on the hand car and he falls off the hand car.

  • And he actually did real harm to himself in that sequence.

  • So this first sequence, it comes from Cops.

  • And in many ways, I think it embodies

  • that kind of aversion of the trajectory or crescendo joke

  • I was talking about earlier.

  • It's a small version of the cannon joke

  • that you see in-- or jokes plural,

  • because there's another joke with the cannon

  • in the second half of the film-- that I've talked about earlier.

  • Let's show it, Greg.

  • And, of course, this is the moment where Keaton

  • is in flight from the police.

  • The cops are chasing him.

  • He runs up this teeter-totter.

  • He runs up a ladder.

  • It turns out to be like a seesaw.

  • And there we see the Buster character

  • trying to elude cops who come up on either side

  • of the teeter-totter.

  • You see his acrobatic qualities.

  • But part of what makes it good is that we

  • know he's improvising here.

  • He's in trouble.

  • People on both ends now are after him.

  • How can you escape this?

  • Teeter-totter up and down, it seems as if there's no escape.

  • It's almost as if every cop in the city

  • is now after poor Buster, massive forces

  • arrayed against the lone hero, a key to his comedy.

  • And, of course, that's the process shot.

  • But it is a very witty way to end.

  • I mean what does it depend on?

  • Among other things, an engineer's

  • understanding of the laws of motion.

  • Many of Keaton's jokes depend on a kind

  • of collaboration with gravity and call attention to that.

  • So it seems as if there's no escape.

  • And he does not escape because of anything that he

  • himself has really done.

  • It's contingent.

  • It's accidental.

  • But he does escape, right.

  • It's as if the universe sometimes , not always,

  • conspires to help us.

  • If we try hard, sometimes it'll help us.

  • Sometimes it won't.

  • We're mostly foolish characters muddling through.

  • The jokes say that again and again.

  • It's a vision of life.

  • Now, I want to contrast this kind of joking

  • and this kind of style.

  • Again, for that effect to work, the camera

  • had to be pretty far back.

  • It depended on your seeing the seesaw going up and down.

  • It depended on your seeing the cops

  • on either side of the ladder.

  • So in that sense, it's a characteristic Keaton moment,

  • a characteristic Keaton passage.

  • I want to show you two passages from feature films of Chaplin's

  • that I think are those characteristic moments

  • of Chaplin.

  • And you'll see how they fit into what I've already said.

  • First, a scene from The Gold Rush.

  • And let me set it up for you.

  • One of the delightful and important things

  • about the Tramp's character, as I mentioned this afternoon,

  • is after a while-- Chaplain made a total of 81 films.

  • The vast majority of them were silent films.

  • After the first couple of films that he made,

  • the Tramp character began to elaborate itself and proceed

  • by a principle of accretion.

  • That's very important for us to be aware of.

  • Because think of what this means.

  • If the audience for Modern Times had

  • seen 50 Chaplin shorts or most of Chaplin's movies-- and this

  • would have been true.

  • In 1936, the vast majority of the movie audience

  • would have lived through the silent era

  • and certainly would have known a great many Chaplin films.

  • So when they came to see Modern Times,

  • they had in their memory banks all these other stories

  • about the Tramp.

  • And, in fact, they didn't have to wait for Modern

  • Times for this effect to occur.

  • As the Tramp begin to generate a kind of reputation

  • and more and more people came to watch him,

  • what began to happen was that each subsequent adventure

  • of the Tramp got richer, not because of anything

  • inherent in the new adventure, but

  • because the previous adventures lay behind it and were

  • part of the Tramp's ongoing identity.

  • So as the audience became more familiar with the Tramp

  • and as Chaplin's gifts for dramatizing character

  • and for making movies enlarged, so

  • did the resonance of the Tramp as a figure.

  • And I should have said this afternoon

  • because it's the deepest explanation for why

  • the Tramp became a mythic figure, why the Tramp became

  • such a memorable and powerful icon.

  • And in this sequence, you're going

  • to see one of the classic instances of the Tramp's

  • resilient imaginativeness in the face of difficulty and danger.

  • In The Gold Rush, the identity that Charlie

  • takes on-- by the time he comes to make his feature films,

  • there are dozens and dozens, 30, 40 short films in the past.

  • And all of those identities, all of those adventures,

  • feed into and inform the more recent ones.

  • When the audience then comes to watch Modern Times and The Gold

  • Rush, it has that history behind it.

  • In this particular film, Charlie takes

  • on the identity of a '49er, not a football player but a miner,

  • who's gone to Alaska for the Alaska gold rush.

  • We've seen him as a waiter.

  • We've seen him as a ship builder.

  • We've seen him as a pawn broker's assistant.

  • We've seen him in a whole range of other jobs.

  • And until Modern Times, each film,

  • even the feature-length films, only

  • show Charlie in one occupation.

  • It's only in Modern Times where we see him

  • in multiple occupations.

  • It's one of the things that marks Modern Time's greater

  • complexity from the earlier film.

  • So what's happened, he goes to Alaska.

  • He finds himself stuck in a cabin

  • after a terrible avalanche and snowstorm.

  • He's stuck in the cabin without food,

  • with a massive, gigantic fellow, one

  • of his favorite antagonists.

  • Mack Swain, there's a name.

  • And Chaplain certainly chose him because he was so humongously

  • large that when he was juxtaposed against Charlie,

  • he looked even more menacing.

  • Well, in the sequence you're about to see

  • Charlie is confined in a cabin, in a horrible snowstorm,

  • starving, with this gigantic fellow, who's

  • beginning to look at Charlie as if he might be a tasty morsel.

  • And it's Thanksgiving.

  • It's Thanksgiving.

  • They're about to have Thanksgiving dinner.

  • What are they going to do?

  • Watch Charlie's imaginative response.

  • OK, Greg.

  • [MUSIC PLAYING]

  • Even before this, we've seen the Mack Swain character

  • look at Charlie with a kind of hungry eye.

  • And you'll see him do it again here.

  • Watch how Charlie interacts with particular objects,

  • with small objects.

  • What he's done is he's cooked a boot, one of their shoes.

  • The shoelaces become spaghetti.

  • Did you see the subtlety of that moment

  • where Charlie look frightened?

  • Watch the range of emotions that he's

  • able to express in his face.

  • Now, you see how he uses closeups,

  • how it's a drama of character.

  • You see now, he lacks Charlie's imaginativeness.

  • So he doesn't survive as well.

  • It's almost like mind over matter.

  • It's that quality in the Chaplain character,

  • I think, more than any other, that

  • explains why people loved him.

  • You see, if you act like you're eating good food,

  • you almost are.

  • All right.

  • That's enough Greg.

  • You get the idea.

  • It's a remarkable film.

  • And you get an idea.

  • Now, the next sequence I want to show you is in some sense

  • even more powerful.

  • It's less comic, although there are comic elements in it.

  • It's Chaplain at his most dramatic.

  • And it's the final sequence of the film City Lights, the film

  • that precedes Modern Times.

  • Five years separate them.

  • But it's the last film he made before Modern Times.

  • And it's essentially an urban drama,

  • in which the Tramp character finds himself

  • protecting a vulnerable woman.

  • And the woman he's protecting is a blind flower girl.

  • She's blind.

  • And so she's even more vulnerable and deserving

  • of protection than a sighted flower girl would be.

  • So Charlie sort of takes her under his wing.

  • And because she's blind, she doesn't

  • realize-- there's a kind of trick

  • in the beginning, a visual trick, that

  • makes the blind flower girl believe

  • that Charlie is a wealthy man.

  • And Charlie allows her to believe this.

  • He's the Tramp.

  • But he allows her to believe that he's wealthy.

  • And he visits with her.

  • And she has an aged mother, something

  • like the character you see in The Immigrant,

  • who dies in the course of the film.

  • And the second subplot in the film

  • has Charlie befriending a very wealthy man, who

  • is incredibly nice to him when he's drunk and kicks him out

  • of his life when he's sober.

  • And his irrationality is part of Chaplin's critique

  • of capitalism, I think, because he's a rich man.

  • But when he's drunk, he loves Charlie.

  • And he gives Charlie money and so forth.

  • But Charley uses this to get a fortune.

  • And he sees an article in a newspaper about a Swiss doctor

  • who can fix blindness.

  • And he sends the flower girl to Switzerland or someplace.

  • And she has the operation.

  • She has her sight regained.

  • And the Tramp character has had his usual misadventures.

  • And he's just getting out of prison

  • at the very end of the film.

  • So the encounter he's going to have

  • with the now sighted flower girl, which

  • is the very climax of City Lights-- this encounter

  • that he's going to have with her is an encounter

  • in which he and the audience know perfectly well who

  • all the characters are.

  • But she has never set eyes on Charlie before.

  • And she has the idea that her benefactor, the man who

  • sent her for the operation and restored her sight,

  • is a wealthy and handsome fellow.

  • Here is the ending of City Lights.

  • [MUSIC PLAYING]

  • So for the audience, this moment has tremendous poignance

  • because the audience is aware of things

  • that the female character is not aware of it.

  • That there's her benefactor, this shabby little tramp.

  • So her condescension to him in this sequence

  • has tremendous poignance for the audience.

  • And look at the closeup on Charley here,

  • Charley sees who it is.

  • Charlie knows who it is.

  • The only thing that's wrong with this ending is the titles

  • are unnecessary.

  • The faces are so eloquent, they're unnecessary.

  • The words aren't needed.

  • In fact, the words even simplify.

  • Can you see how Charley's expression

  • involves pride, as well as affection and a kind of love.

  • He's incredibly excited and happy to see her

  • and to see her sighted.

  • See the power of a closeup.

  • She suddenly realizes who it is from touch.

  • The least necessary intertitle in the history of movies

  • is about to appear.

  • But look at the closeups here.

  • Look at the art of these closeups.

  • Another unnecessarily line.

  • There are people who have said that that last closeup is

  • the most eloquent closeup in the history of movies.

  • It might be true.

  • Because the complexity of emotion

  • that's playing across Charlie's face there--

  • it's hard for people who haven't seen

  • the whole film to fully grasp it,

  • although I tried to set it up.

  • It's partly that he knows there can never

  • be anything between them.

  • It's partly that he's full of joy over the fact

  • that he's been able to help her.

  • But there's also a sense of their inevitable separation,

  • of the differences between them.

  • And that's part of what's reflected

  • in that closeup at the end.

  • And another thing I would call your attention to,

  • part of Chaplin's subtly, is look how

  • he doesn't hold it too long.

  • A truly sentimental director would

  • have held his final shot, Charley's face,

  • twice as long, three times as long.

  • But do you notice how wasn't there for very long?

  • His hand was over here and then the screen goes blank.

  • He doesn't milk the moment, even though it's an immensely

  • complicated moment.

  • But the most important thing to say about this scene

  • is that it's a scene that's played out

  • by the drama of the face.

  • It shows how Chaplin had reached a point by the time he reached

  • his maturity in the 1920s, had reached

  • a point where he could create films

  • in which closeups on expressive actors' faces,

  • and especially closeups on the Tramp's face,

  • could reveal worlds of meaning.

  • The range of contradictory feelings and meanings

  • that run across the theater of Charley's face

  • in these final sequences of City Lights

  • are proof of the eloquence of the silent film

  • and are a particularly distinctive signature instance

  • of Chaplin's art.

  • Well, in the time I have remaining,

  • what I'd like to do is talk very quickly about Modern Times

  • itself, the great masterpiece that you're

  • going to be seeing in a few minutes,

  • as a way of sort of setting up some of the things for you

  • to watch for.

  • But I feel badly that I couldn't do

  • this fully enough with The General, which

  • is an equally complex film.

  • And I only have a few minutes here.

  • So I can hardly do full justice to the astonishing richness

  • and complexity of Modern Times.

  • But I want to call your attention

  • to certain features in it and count

  • on your being as attentive and generous in your viewing

  • as you possibly can.

  • I'm sure you'll pick up other things as well.

  • First, the context of the film.

  • I've already mentioned this.

  • So I don't have to spend a lot of time on it.

  • But it's very interesting and significant that the film was

  • made in 1936, released in 1936, something like seven or eight

  • years into the sound era.

  • There hadn't been any silent films made.

  • Now, I'm not saying that Modern Times is actually

  • a truly silent film.

  • It's not.

  • It has a soundtrack.

  • And the soundtrack is complex and rich.

  • And I'll say at least a word about it

  • before I'm finished here.

  • But in every fundamental respect,

  • Modern Times wants its viewers to think of it

  • as a silent film.

  • It invokes the tradition of silent film

  • and especially the tradition of Chaplin films,

  • to which it systematically alludes

  • in virtually every frame.

  • So the context for the film is first is

  • that it is in a certain way a kind of silent film.

  • There is no synchronous dialog in it.

  • There are sound effects-- and, of course,

  • there's music-- a soundtrack the Chaplain arranged

  • very complexly.

  • And it's a very rich soundtrack.

  • But there's no synchronous dialogue until the very end.

  • At the very end, there is synchronous dialogue.

  • And it's Charley who speaks it.

  • In fact, the film was advertised as follows in many newspapers.

  • It was, "The Tramp speaks."

  • Well, watch for what happens when the Tramp speaks.

  • It's one of the film's great and serious jokes.

  • He does speak at the end.

  • And it's the only moment.

  • You do hear dialogue elsewhere in the film.

  • I'm getting ahead of myself.

  • This is what I wanted to say about sound.

  • But you don't see synchronous dialogue.

  • You don't see people moving their lips and words

  • coming out of there.

  • You see people on a screen talking

  • or you hear people on a radio talking.

  • But you don't see someone on screen actually moving his lips

  • and words, sound coming out, until the very end,

  • when Charlie does his song.

  • He sings a song.

  • He plays a waiter near the end of the film.

  • And he sings a song.

  • And he tells a story with the song.

  • Watch for what happens.

  • So the Tramp does talk.

  • But it's a wonderful comic joke.

  • Another aspect of the context of Modern Times

  • is it takes place during the Depression.

  • But the subject matter of Modern Times

  • was Chaplin's typical subject matter.

  • It was about the Depression.

  • It was about hunger, about misery,

  • about someone who can't find a job, about two homeless people,

  • about the conflict between capital and labor,

  • about the irrationality of both sides.

  • It was literally about the turmoil and trouble

  • that was going on during the Great Depression.

  • Many people predicted, not only that the film

  • would fail because it was really essentially a silent film

  • in an era when no one was interested in silent film

  • anymore, but also that it would fail because it was rubbing

  • the audience's noses in the very experiences

  • they were trying to escape when they

  • came to the movies, the escapist theory of why

  • people attend films.

  • Of course, both predictions were mistaken.

  • Modern Times was a significant commercial success,

  • partly because Chaplin was very clever in the way he

  • did his exhibition of the film.

  • He released it first, not in mass release,

  • but to elite feeders, which charged

  • quite a great deal of money, and then slowly allowed

  • the film to reach larger and larger theaters.

  • He anticipated certain modern marketing methods

  • with the release of Modern Times.

  • And, of course, by 1936, Charlie Chaplin

  • was an internationally famous figure, of such stature.

  • He was about the only figure, maybe apart from D.W. Griffith,

  • about whom people had begun to write essays calling him

  • an artist.

  • So Chaplain occupied a unique place.

  • And that was also part of why Modern Times was

  • waited for so fully.

  • So the context of Modern Times is important.

  • There's something brave and surprising about the fact

  • that it was about the miseries of the Depression

  • during the Depression, that it was essentially a silent film

  • in the middle of the sound era.

  • Both very bold decisions on Chaplin's part,

  • both characteristic of his ambitiousness as an artist.

  • Like Keaton's The General, we could certainly call this film

  • also a culminating text, a summarizing text,

  • in several senses.

  • It's a culminating text in terms of Chaplin's work.

  • And I've already talked about that.

  • Every single person coming to see Modern Times, who

  • had any experience with the movies before,

  • would recognize in Modern Times situations

  • and even physical spaces that had occurred in earlier Chaplin

  • films.

  • So there was almost a sense in which

  • Modern Times was a reprise of the whole career of the Tramp.

  • And I mentioned that Modern Times

  • shows us the Tramp for the first time in multiple jobs Having

  • multiple sources of-- and, in fact, multiple misadventures.

  • He goes to jail more than once in the film.

  • We find him in a factory more than once in the film

  • and so forth.

  • So there's a sense in which the various separate episodes

  • of Modern Times, taken together, dramatize, in small, the whole

  • of the Tramp's career.

  • And there are many specific bits of business and scenes

  • in Modern Times that are little repetitions, or echoes,

  • or reprises of earlier Chaplin films, which have caused

  • a shock of recognition in the audience, a happy kind

  • of recognition.

  • There are many examples of that.

  • There are many earlier films which deal with restaurants.

  • You'll see some of them from the shorts

  • that you've looked at, certain echoes.

  • I won't talk about any of them beyond mentioning that there's

  • a remarkable sequence in the film-- if we have time,

  • I'll show it to you.

  • But we probably won't have time-- in which

  • we see Charlie on skates.

  • And that scene alludes to a whole short

  • that Chaplain had made, in which he plays a waiter who

  • has to serve people on skates.

  • And you'll see that he has to do that again

  • at the end of the film.

  • He sort of reprises that role.

  • And then there's an earlier moment

  • in the film where we see Chaplin states as well.

  • But the main point is that virtually every moment

  • in Modern Times has some counterpart in an earlier

  • Chaplain short.

  • So there would have been a sense of the audience coming back

  • to Charlie, returning to the world

  • that Charlie stood for, when they

  • came to watch Modern Times.

  • So it's a culmination of Chaplin's career.

  • But it's also in a deep sense, like The General,

  • a culmination of silent film.

  • And it would have had that nostalgic affect.

  • It would have had that nostalgic effect

  • on the original audience.

  • Most of the original audience would have recognized the film

  • as an embodiment of a phase of movie going that had passed.

  • And we should watch it in that way as well.

  • I want to say a word about the Gamin.

  • That's the character, the female character in the film

  • because she represents an advance

  • over any previous Chaplin movie.

  • As I suggested earlier, in most Chaplin films,

  • women are relatively stereotyped and don't

  • play very active roles.

  • This is the first film in which there's

  • a woman who seems to be in some sense the Tramp's equal,

  • in many ways more than his equal.

  • She has more energy.

  • She's a bit younger.

  • You might watch for the ambiguity

  • in their relationship.

  • Is it a sexual relationship, a romantic relation?

  • Probably not.

  • Charlie's a lot older than the Gamin.

  • In real life, he was having an affair with her,

  • I might mention to you.

  • In fact, he was famous for having relations

  • with young women, especially his young actresses.

  • And there were scandals connected to Chaplin's name

  • partly because of this.

  • And Paulette Goddard, the actress

  • who plays the Gamin in this film,

  • entered on a career of great fame

  • in the movies, partly because of this role.

  • And you could see how expressive and remarkable her face is.

  • This is the first female character

  • who has energy, will, who has a kind of aggressive capacity

  • to be resilient and care for herself.

  • And that represents a tremendous advance in Chaplin's work.

  • She's the first sort of semi-independent female

  • in Chaplin's work.

  • And you can see in a certain way,

  • she's a kind of partner for Chaplin.

  • When this film ends with Charlie and the Gamin

  • walking down the road toward an unknown future,

  • the only difference between that ending and the ending

  • we normally see in a Chaplain short

  • is that Chaplain is usually alone

  • when he walks down the road toward the mountains

  • in the distance.

  • And in this film, he is has partner.

  • So there's a slight suggestion of,

  • if not exactly hopefulness, at least the resilience,

  • of the capacity to survive.

  • You have someone to help you.

  • And you might watch the way the Paulette Goddard character is

  • treated in the film.

  • Because she actually represents something new

  • in Chaplin's work, a real advance

  • in his understanding of how to deal with female characters.

  • A new kind of respect for women show up in this film.

  • I've mentioned the soundtrack before.

  • But I want to quickly call your attention

  • to two features of it.

  • One is that Chaplin arranged the sound track very carefully.

  • And what you'll notice if you pay

  • attention is that the soundtrack has what

  • we might call a quality in which particular themes recur

  • when certain characters appear on screen.

  • And you begin to associate certain melodies

  • with certain characters.

  • And you should watch the way this unfolds.

  • I mean the melody that's played behind the Chaplain character

  • was actually a popular song of the day, entitled,

  • although the words are never sung in the film, "Hallelujah,

  • I'm a Tramp."

  • And it was a song about being free,

  • and not having to worry about working, and riding

  • the rails, and so forth.

  • Hurray, I don't have a job.

  • Hurray I'm a free, in those ways.

  • But each of the characters, each of the major characters

  • in the film, has a musical theme associated with him or her.

  • And you should watch the way they sort of meld in

  • and blend together.

  • Chaplain took the sound in the film very seriously.

  • I've mentioned the talking theme.

  • Watch the mocking way in which talk

  • itself, speech, is dealt with in the soundtrack.

  • You might want to talk about this in your recitations.

  • But ask yourself what's going on there?

  • Why would Chaplain, in the end, denigrate talk?

  • I think the answer is obvious.

  • The Tramp is a silent character.

  • It's as if this is the revenge of silent film on talkies.

  • It's as if the film is saying talk is crap, talk is silly,

  • talk is ridiculous.

  • Who needs talk?

  • Watch how the film repeatedly makes fun of talking

  • or shows talking as inadequate or unnecessary.

  • And also the way the film associates

  • talkies with something else that the film is

  • very hostile to, which is mechanized industrialization.

  • The film is a critique of the excesses

  • of capitalism and the excesses especially,

  • the tedium of factory work.

  • And talk and talking films are associated

  • with what the film identifies as evil or dangerous,

  • as you'll see.

  • But there's also a moment in the film

  • that-- I won't show it to you.

  • But I'll mention it and ask you to watch for it-- where

  • we can see another way.

  • It's only one of the ways in which Chaplin

  • manipulates sound.

  • And it's an interesting moment because it's easy to miss,

  • easy not to register what's happening there.

  • There's a moment in the center of the film where

  • Charlie and the Gamin escape their difficulties briefly.

  • Charlie gets a job as a night watchman in a department store.

  • And the department store is like capitalist heaven.

  • They've been living hand to mouth, nearly starving.

  • And they find themselves in the department store.

  • There's food.

  • There are beds.

  • There are beautiful warm clothes.

  • There are toys.

  • There are even roller skates.

  • And there's a moment when Charlie and the Gamin

  • exploring the store, having this exciting experience

  • with all these goods, which they are deprived of.

  • It's not an accident that that scene is

  • at the very center of the film.

  • Almost all the scenes on either side of the department store

  • scene rhyme with each in certain ways,

  • as an aspect of the structure of the film.

  • And I'll come to that in second.

  • I'll conclude with that point.

  • But the department store scene is the only one that

  • doesn't have any counterpart.

  • It's right at the very center of the film.

  • And what one can feel is the way in which

  • that dramatizes the injustice, the sense of haves

  • and have nots that is at the center of the film's meaning.

  • The film is always in some sense interested in that topic.

  • So there's a moment when the Gamin and Charlie

  • find themselves in this store.

  • Charlie, in his exuberance and high spirits,

  • straps on roller skates and begins skating around.

  • And if you listen to the soundtrack,

  • you'll see the soundtrack is very beautiful and gentle.

  • And you know, dah.

  • It's very calming and exciting.

  • And as Charlie is skating, the camera

  • shows that, in fact, he's skating

  • in a very dangerous area.

  • The store is partly under construction.

  • And on one point, while he's skating,

  • he puts a blindfold on.

  • And he's still skating very calmly,

  • and beautifully, and gracefully.

  • And the soundtrack under it is very graceful and appropriate

  • to his feelings.

  • But what the camera shows, what you see,

  • is him coming near the edge of an abyss.

  • Actually, it's a platform.

  • He might fall three stories down into the lower story.

  • And he's not aware of it because he's blindfolded.

  • And the sound-- and then, of course,

  • there's a certain moment where he takes the blindfold off

  • and he sees that he's about to fall.

  • And he gets nervous.

  • And he suddenly is no longer so graceful.

  • It's kind of a minor joke.

  • But what's really interesting about the moment

  • is to think about what Chaplain is doing with the soundtrack.

  • Because when you reflect on it, what you realize

  • is that what Chaplain has done with that soundtrack

  • is have it reflect not the external reality

  • that we're all watching, but the inner feelings that Charlie

  • is feeling.

  • What he's done is he's discovered

  • a way-- it's a simple point, but it's a brilliant discovery.

  • He's discovered a way to use the soundtrack

  • to express a subjective state.

  • And what he's also discovered, of course,

  • is that-- although other people had

  • discovered this principle too.

  • But Chaplin's using it with great intelligence.

  • He's discovered that the soundtrack and the visual track

  • don't have to absolutely coincide.

  • That they can report different emotions

  • or cause different kinds of reaction.

  • And that what you get when you have this disjunction

  • is something much more complex.

  • We see Charlie is skating in danger.

  • But his obliviousness to the danger

  • is partly registered by the music, which tells us

  • not about what's happening outwardly,

  • but what's happening inside Charlie.

  • And there are other moments like this in the film,

  • not necessarily with the soundtrack,

  • but in other ways, in which the subjective states

  • of the characters are explored.

  • Pay attention to those because they're

  • very remarkable and interesting moments, in which Chaplain

  • is expanding the repertoire of film.

  • The structure of the film is especially interesting.

  • And I won't say more about it, than to say

  • if you watch closely what you will see

  • is the structure is a profound structure of repetition.

  • As in The General, the film's first half

  • is revisited in the film's second half.

  • It's as if the film is based on a series of rhyming scenes.

  • In the first half of the film, there's

  • a fantasy sequence in which we see Charlie

  • and the Gamin inside a kind of cabined environment,

  • inside a kind of domestic scene.

  • It's actually a fantasy scene, in which

  • Charlie imagines a suburban heaven for him and the Gamin.

  • In the second half of the film, there's

  • an actual cabin in the mud flats that they live in.

  • And those two scenes are sort of in conversation

  • with each other.

  • There are two extended sequences in factories

  • and involving the malfunctioning of machinery.

  • And what you'll notice, if you pay close attention

  • to the film, is that this principle of rhyming scenes

  • creates a situation in which in the second half of the film

  • you partly feel that you're revisiting

  • scenes and experiences that you've had before.

  • And one of the reasons that this is a useful

  • and an important idea is that if you think about Charlie's life

  • and you think about the previous history of Chaplin's career

  • as a director and as an actor, what you realize

  • is that in a deep sense what Modern Times is doing

  • is replicating the history of Charlie's career.

  • Because Charlie has held a series of jobs.

  • Charlie has been in 15, or 20, or 40,

  • or a hundred different environments.

  • And in virtually every case or in every case,

  • the ending has been the same.

  • He has been released into an ambiguous kind of homelessness

  • and freedom at the end of the film.

  • There's something footloose, homeless, and unfinished

  • about Charlie's life.

  • And after a while, you come to realize you

  • this would have been true by 1920,

  • if you had paid attention to the 30

  • or so other Chaplin shorts that already existed.

  • The fact is that it's an endless process.

  • So another thing that the structure of Modern Times

  • manages to dramatize, maybe more deeply and powerfully

  • than any prior Chaplin film has been able to do exactly because

  • of this mirror structure, is that this principle

  • of repetition never ends, that Charlie

  • is on a kind of treadmill.

  • And, of course, Charlie revisits scenes and repeats actions

  • that we'd seen earlier in the film

  • because his life is a series of repetitions.

  • Because the film's vision of social life

  • for a character like Charlie is one that's so mordant.

  • What he's suggesting is things are hard, things are tough.

  • This man's homelessness, this man's hunger, will never abate.

  • He's going to have a struggle for his whole life.

  • But we don't despair because the Chaplain character

  • himself doesn't despair.

  • So pay attention to the way the structure embodies the meaning.

  • The point I'm making now, and I'll come back

  • to this later in the course, the point I'm making now

  • is a way of talking about what could

  • be called the film's commitment to the principle

  • of organic form.

  • When the structure of a text is organic, what is meant by that

  • is that the structure itself embodies meaning.

  • That the way the text is organized

  • carries the themes of the text.

  • And if you think about the structure of Modern Times,

  • you'll see that it's a marvelously distilled instance,

  • a marvelously clear instance, of the principle of organic form.

  • What happens to Charlie serially is

  • more meaningful in a way than what happens

  • to him in a single episode.

  • And the fact that we have this sense

  • that things are repeating, that Charlie is on a treadmill,

  • that he lives a cyclical life, that he'll always have moments

  • of hope and hopelessness, that he'll have momentary times when

  • he finds a place to live or find sufficient food.

  • But that it will always be temporary.

  • That his life is always on the road.

  • That his life is always in process.

  • And that, at the same time, he never

  • lets himself completely despair.

  • There's always a moment where his resilience reasserts

  • itself.

  • Where those elements are embedded

  • in some sense in the very structure,

  • the very organization of the film.

  • And I urge you to watch it.

  • What's been embedded or implied in a good deal of what I've

  • been saying tonight also has to do

  • broadly with what might be called as the director

  • Chaplin's complexity.

  • Almost every moment in Chaplin, and certainly

  • almost every moment in Modern Times,

  • has the kind of multiplicity, or density,

  • or texture that I've been describing to you

  • as the mark of a serious film.

  • The mark of what I want to call a work of art.

  • And if you pay attention, one of the things you'll find

  • is that even the moments that seem on the surface to be

  • the simplest ones, are not.

  • Or even the implications in the film

  • that seem the simplest are not.

  • Just one example, the film's critique of capitalism,

  • of a certain kind of excessive form of industrial capitalism,

  • is obvious and very deep.

  • I mean the film is deeply hostile to the dehumanization

  • that work on the assembly line generates for people.

  • And Chaplain works wonderfully comic variations on this idea.

  • And yet if you think of the film in a simple way,

  • if you think in the film in a simple way

  • as a kind of Marxist or left-wing screed,

  • you're really mistaken.

  • And some people did, in fact.

  • And Chaplain was hounded out of the United States

  • later in his career, in part because he

  • was associated with what we thought to be left-wing causes.

  • But Chaplin's socialism was of a particularly sentimental

  • variety.

  • And he was certainly no systematic communist.

  • But the most important thing about Chaplain

  • is his complexity.

  • Because if you look closely at the film, one of things

  • you'll find that it isn't just capital that's criticized.

  • It's also labor.

  • There's a wonderful moment in the film when Charlie finally,

  • after times of difficulty, reads in the newspaper

  • that the factory is hiring again.

  • And he's very excited.

  • And he leaves the Gamin.

  • They'd been living in their little sort of idyllic cabin

  • in the mud flats in the second half of the film.

  • And he runs out to the factory.

  • And he gets hired.

  • And just as he's about to start his work,

  • the workers go on strike and his life is destroyed again.

  • And, in fact, the truth of the matter

  • is that Chaplain is an equal opportunity insulter.

  • He thinks that labor is just as stupid.

  • Organized labor is just as foolish, just as misguided

  • as capital.

  • Something of the complexity of his social vision

  • is reflected there.

  • And something of the complexity of his moral and psychological

  • vision is reflected in the way the Tramp interacts

  • with the Gamin.

  • And in the way in which both the Tramp and the Gamin together,

  • at different moments in the film,

  • try to buck each other up.

  • So we see that there are moments in which each character falls

  • into a kind of despair in the face of the difficulties

  • that they encounter and in which they

  • are helped by their partner.

  • So there's a kind of complexity or maturity

  • in Chaplin's way of understanding

  • even the social difficulty, the social evils,

  • the social problems that he recurrently

  • dramatizes in his film.

  • For those of you who have never seen a Chaplin film before,

  • and especially those of you who have never see Modern Times,

  • let me conclude by saying I'm a little bit

  • jealous of the opportunity you have to see

  • this film for the first time.

  • It's one of the very few silent films

  • I think-- I think The General is also one-- that actually stands

  • on its own.

  • That's worth watching, even without any arguments

  • about its artifactual value.

  • I wish you the joy of this remarkable film.

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