the m0vie blog

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Dean Buckley, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

So this week, Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times.

A factory worker suffers a psychotic breakdown on the assembly line, and loses his job. Upon recovery, he very quickly finds himself swept up in a series of misadventures that reflect the rapidly changing balance between human labour and industrialisation. Is there still room for the lovable tramp in a society so dramatically reinventing itself?

At time of recording, it was ranked 40th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Show Notes:

• Recorded 27th January 2022.
• Note: Due to the COVID-19 situation, this episode was recorded remotely. We suspect, going forward that a lot of our episodes will be until the crisis resolves.
• It Happened One Night at the Internet Movie Database.
• The Top 250 at time of recording.
• Follow Dean Buckley at Twitter.
• Read Dean at The Sundae.
• Listen to Dean on The Sundae Presents.
• David Sims at The Atlantic discusses the legacy of Speed Racer, May 2018.
• Ed Power at The Telegraph assesses the impact of Speed Racer in the decade-and-change that followed, December 2021.
• Jeffrey Vance at The Library of Congress places Modern Times in its historical context, 2003.
• Saul Austerlitz at Criterion discusses the production and development of Modern Times, November 2010.
• Matthew Sweet at UnHerd looks back at Charlie Chaplin’s increasing political and social awareness, April 2021.
• Garson O’Toole at Quote Investigator looks into the relationship between Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein, November 2013.
• Claire Cock-Starkey at Mental Floss looks at the unlikely friendship between Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin, February 2018.
• Royal Docks looks at the unlikely intersection of Charlie Chaplin and Mahatma Gandhi, November 2021.
• The Guardian looks back on Charlie Chaplin as the first movie star with a clear and discernable social conscience, February 2014.
• Colin Burnett at Senses of Cinema looks back on the legacy of Otis Ferguson as one of America’s first and defining film critics, February 2004.
• Charles Silver at The Museum of Modern Art looks at Modern Times as a work reflecting the Great Depression, November 2010.
• Lauren Kaori Gurley at Vice presents evidence of Amazon staff having to pee in bottles, March 2021.
• Colin Drury at The Independent reports on Amazon factory staff having to urinate in bottles to meet quotas, July 2019.
• Gregory Stevens at Senses of Cinema reflects on Modern Times as a movie about humanity striking back at mechanisation, October 2011.
• Megan Garber at The Atlantic discusses the limitations of America’s obsession with happy endings, July 2018.
• Julie Beck at The Atlantic reports on the shifting meaning of the term “emotional labour”, November 2018.
• Solomon Hillfleet at An Injustice Magazine looks at America’s “faux middle class”, February 2020.
• Anne Helen Petersen at Vox reports on the erosion of the American middle class, December 2020.
• Meagan Day at Jacobin Magazine looks at the myth of America as a nation of “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”, May 2018.
• Julien E. Zelizer at CNN discusses the renewed relevance of Modern Times in the wake of the Great Recession, November 2010.
• Alan Vanneman at Bright Lights Film Journal looks at some likely sources of inspiration for Modern Times, April 2021.
• Jesse Rhodes at The Smithsonian Magazine looks at the importance of food in the films of Charlie Chaplin, February 2011.
• Jacob Leland at The Paris Review discusses Modern Times as a film about the act of consuming for its own sake, January 2013.
• Suyin Haynes at Time discusses the history of crop destruction to drive up scarcity even in times of profound hunger, May 2020.
• Ethan Porter talks to Vox about how Americans often behave more like consumers than citizens, December 2020.
• Lauren Niland at The Guardian reports on Charlie Chaplin’s deportation from the United States, September 1952.
• John Sbardellati and Tony Shaw discuss the characterisation of Chaplin as a communist in The Pacific Historical Review, November 2003.
• Mark Lynn Anderson at Labour Films presents Modern Times in the context of Chaplin’s left-leaning politics, November 2000.
• Pamela Hutchinson at The Guardian discusses Charlie Chaplin’s popularity in Soviet Russia, May 2016.
• Martin Bright at The Guardian looks at how being branded “prematurely antifascist” wounded Chaplin’s career, July 2002.
• The New York Times reports on the lawsuit alleging that Modern Times plagiarised A Nous La Liberte, April 1937.
• The Independent offers a social history of cocaine abuse, March 2006.
• Meghan O’Keefe at Decider ponders whether Charlie Chaplin invented the cocaine joke in Modern Times, May 2018.
• Lauren Oliver at Vice on the dark legacy of Charlie Chaplin’s personal life, April 2016.
• Martin Chilton at The Telegraph on Charlie Chaplin’s divorce scandal, July 2020.
• Emily Smith at Page Six reports on discovered documents covering Lita Grey’s allegation against Charlie Chaplin, April 2015.
• Emma Alsop at The Artifice on the lives and loves of Charlie Chaplin, January 2013.
• Susan King at The Los Angeles Times looks at the deleted alternate ending to Modern Times, July 2003.
• Time looks at the production and the personal motivations at play within Modern Times, February 1936.
• The Los Angeles Times marks the passing of Paulette Goddard, April 1990.
• The New York Times marks the passing of Paulette Goddard, April 1990.
• The Chicago Tribune marks the passing of Paulette Goddard, April 1990.
• Tina Hassannia at The Atlantic discusses Chaplin’s exploitation of his musical collaborators, December 2018.
• The New York Times reviews Modern Times, February 1936.
• Frank S. Nugent at The New York Times discusses the return of Charlie Chaplin to the screen with Modern Times, February 1936.
• Alex Bauer at Medium discusses Charlie Chaplin’s resistance to the emergence of sound in motion pictures, September 2017.
• Gogo Lidz at Newsweek discusses the history of the fart joke on screen, October 2014.
• Prisencolinensinainciusol by Adriano Celentano, November 1972.
• Max Tohline at Bright Lights Film Journal looks at the way that nostalgia shapes and impact the IMDb 250, January 2020.
• David Kehr at The New York Times discusses the nostalgia for Chaplin’s earlier films in Modern Times, November 2010.
• Christian Blauvelt at The BBC breaks down the linguistic barriers that lead to diverse global opinions on the subject of comedy, August 2017.
• Dove Barbanel at The New York Times reports on screenings of Charlie Chaplin movies for refugees in Greece, December 2017.
• Chris Kraul at The Los Angeles Times reports on Hugo Chavez’s government organising public screenings of Modern Times for the citizens, July 2006.
• Tamara Falicov at Public discusses the screening of Modern Times in mobile cinemas in Cuba, September 2012.
• Amanda Hess at The New York Times argues that silent films are making a comeback as viral fodder on social media platforms, September 2017.
• The Rink, 1916.
• The Floorwalker, 1916.
• Variety promises that Modern Times will deliver “box office with a capital B”, February 1936.
• Lillian Gish talks to Christian Science Monitor about her life and career, September 1982.
• Steven Weinberg at The New York Review of Books discusses the history and the complicated politics of “the whig history of science”, December 2015.
• Dean and Ciara discuss the two cuts of Justice League on The Sundae Presents, January 2022.
• Matt Miller at Esquire looks at the resurgent popularity of black-and-white movies, April 2017.
• Alissa Wilkinson at Vox looks at the number of high-profile black-and-white releases recently, November 2021.
• Dan Laustsen talks to The Wrap about the decision to issue a black-and-white re-release of Nightmare Alley, January 2022.
• H. Perry Horton at Film School Rejects looks at the recent trend of re-releasing blockbusters in black-and-white, June 2017.
• Dave McNary at Variety announces the upcoming release of El Tonto, September 2018.
• Elle Hunt at The Guardian looks at how Friends is often used as a tool to teach English, August 2019.
• Follow The 250 on Twitter.
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• Listen to The 250 on Soundcloud.
• Listen to The 250 on Spotify.
• Browse listening options at pod.link.

Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: change, charlie chaplin, dean buckley, Great Depression, history, humanity, industrialisation, machines, mechanisation, memory, modern times, nostalgia, paulette goddard, romance, silent cinema, sound, talkies, The 250, the great depression, the great recession, the tramp |