Charlie Chaplin went on a world tour after City Lights premiered in 1931 and saw firsthand the economic and political consequences of The Great Depression. During this time he met with such people as Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Bernard Shaw, Gandhi, and H.G. Wells. After returning from his tour, he wrote a series of articles for Women’s Home Companion entitled “A Comedian Sees the World.” In them, he wrote about his desire to make public the social and political problems that he saw. Modern Times became his next feature, and decided to use it to focus on what he believed to be some of the issues that caused the economic crisis.
It is also key to note that Chaplin met with Henry Ford in 1923 at the Ford Auto Plant. He learned that young men were hired away from the farms in order to work the factory lines at Ford’s Detroit plant. After a time, some of these workers began to succumb to nervous breakdowns. Chaplin wanted to show the harsh realities of working on an assembly line, and did so in the opening of his film. He even cast Allan Garcia in the role of President of the Electro Steel Corp. because he bore such a strong resemblance to Ford as well as to Alfred Abel, who played Joh Fredersen, the autocratic founder of the mega city in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
Chaplin’s use of sound is particularly notable for the time period. Chaplin intended the film to be his first “talkie” and wrote a dialogue script. After experimenting with some sound scenes, however, he decided to drop the dialogue and used only some synchronized sound effects and very sparse dialogue. One of his biggest concerns was that the global appeal of his Little Tramp character, as well as some of his mystique, would be ruined if the Tramp was heard speaking. He decided to allow only certain characters to speak in situations where it advanced their characterizations or an important point of the film. The President is the only one allowed a voice in the factory while the workers are kept voiceless (symbolizing their repression), and the mechanical salesman speaks because of the dominance of technology at this time.
The nonsense song that the Tramp sings at the end of the film also comments on the pressure Chaplin felt to begin shooting talkie films. Chaplin was resistant to talkies, and felt that the trend toward talkies was taking some of the magic out of filmmaking. In his final song, the Tramp acts out the whole story of the song without singing any real words, and the audience in the film, as well as the audience of the film, are able to understand much of the song and find it funny. The implication is that words are not necessary to communicate a message. By using this gibberish language, he also manages to keep the Tramp’s real voice hidden in a way, and maintain his appeal as a universal character who can be understood in any language.
