Summary
Behind the opening credits, a clock steadily ticks toward 6 o’clock. At the end of the opening credits, a title appears and informs us that the film is a story of industry and individual enterprise, and of “humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.” In the opening scene, a herd of white sheep, with one black sheep in the middle, crowd together as they make their way forward through a narrow passage. A quick cut juxtaposes that image with one of a crowd of workers emerging from a subway to make their way to the factory. An establishing shot of the factory, from across the street, shows many workers approaching it from different directions, and an interior shot shows them rushing to punch in. Two further establishing shots show the workers rushing to their positions in the factory as the foremen watch. A loud buzzer goes off and a shirtless mechanic walks over to the large control board and flips a giant switch, which sparks in response. He walks down along the control board flipping several more switches.
The President of the Electro Steel Corp. puts together a puzzle and reads a cartoon strip in his office. His secretary drops off some medicine at his desk, which he takes with a glass of water. Then he turns on a machine on the edge of his desk and a screen in the back of the room lights up with live video of the factory floor. The President switches channels, flipping between different views of the factory. Then he rings the control board on the factory floor, and a new shot shows him on the screen at the control board as the same shirtless mechanic from the earlier scene rushes over to respond to him. The president tells the mechanic to speed up the assembly line in section 5, and then his screen shuts off as the mechanic slowly cranks a lever. On the factory floor, the camera pans down one assembly line and across the floor to another assembly line, where we see Big Bill hammering metal plates. It pans further to reveal Chaplin’s Tramp next to him, as a factory worker, tightening bolts as they rapidly pass by his position. The President’s voice can be heard on the speaker system in the background, telling the foreman to make sure section 5 is working fast enough.
The Tramp stops for a minute to scratch his armpit and has to run down the line with the current plate to tighten it, which causes him to crash into Big Bill (the next person on the line) and cause a pile up. The three workers on the line all keep working, as the Tramp speeds back up to get back to his starting position, Big Bill yells at him and pushes him back up the line. Meanwhile, the foreman comes over and yells at the Tramp to speed up. When the Tramp is finally back to his starting position he pauses to argue with the foreman and he again has to run down the line to catch up to the plate he missed. When he finally works back to his starting position again, a bee lands on his face. Another worker passing by tries to hit it with a rolled up newspaper, which again causes the Tramp to miss several plates and have to run down the line. This time, as he is speeding to catch up again, his wrench gets stuck on one of the plates and drags him toward the end of the assembly line. Big Bill hits his hand with a hammer to get him to let go, and then raises his hands to call the line to a halt. The foreman comes over and begins scolding the Tramp, who tells him that Big Bill whacked his hand with a hammer, so the foreman instead scolds Big Bill. As the foreman walks away, the Tramp and Big Bill begin fighting but the line starts moving again and they jump back to work. At the control panel, the President comes back on the screen and tells the mechanic to increase the power in Section 5 even more.
As the line speeds up more, another worker comes to relieve the Tramp so he can take a bathroom break. As the Tramp walks away from his line, he twitches with each step, rotating his wrists, as if he is still turning the bolts on the assembly line. He finally snaps out of it, punches his time card outside the bathroom, and goes into the bathroom for a smoke. As he rests on a sink, finally relaxing, the President appears on a large screen on the other side of the bathroom and yells at him to quit stalling and get back to work. Startled, the Tramp jumps off the sink, runs out of the bathroom, punches his time card again, and peeks back into the bathroom one more time before hurrying back to his position on the line. When he gets there the worker that relieved him does not see him approach, so he stands behind him for a minute, resting, and begins filing his nails. The worker eventually notices him and tries to give him the wrenches back, but the Tramp backs away and points to the line so the other worker keeps going while the Tramp directs him to hurry and catch up on the plates he has been missing. Finally the Tramp claps his hands and takes the wrenches back, and the other worker yells at him as he walks away.
Three men enter the President’s office with a large contraption, and the President watches curiously as one of the men cranks a record player. The record starts and a voice introduces himself as the mechanical salesman. He introduces the inventor of the machine (one of the men present) and begins describing the machine, which is a “feeding machine” capable of automatically feeding the workers while on the line, eliminating the lunch hour and increasing productivity. As the voice describes some of the machine’s features and the men in the room point them out (compressed air blower to cool the soup, corn-feeding mechanism, rotating plate and food pusher, and an automated napkin), the President watches on with interest. The voice requests that the President allow the men to demonstrate the machine on one of the workers. A title page appears saying “lunch time,” and the next shot shows the Tramp’s assembly line coming to a stop. The Tramp is stuck in the motions of the line, however, and twitches as he continues walking down the line, tightening bolts even though the line has stopped. He then turns and sees a set of buttons on the back of the secretary’s skirt that look like bolts, and he tries to tighten them as well. She looks at him, shocked, and walks away, and the Tramp keeps twitching his shoulders and wrists as if he is still on the assembly line as he fetches his lunch and tries to sit down to rest. He nearly sits on Big Bill’s bowl of soup but Big Bill yells at him, so he stands upright just in time. He tries to pass the bowl of soup to Big Bill but is so twitchy that he spills the soup all over the floor and Big Bill himself. Big Bill is outraged and yells at him, and the Tramp finally shakes off the twitches.
Moments later, as the Tramp eats an apple on the bench and tries to relax, the president and the three salesmen come onto the factory floor and select the Tramp for the feeding machine demonstration. The Tramp becomes flustered as the lead salesman begins strapping him into the machine, but he relaxes somewhat when the salesman explains how the machine works. The assistant salesmen start the machine, and the Tramp is fed the soup as his eyes widen. As he stares at the he automated napkin swoops in, startling him, pats his mouth, and then swivels away, and he watches it in a mix of amazement and confusion. Next, he is fed three bites from a rotating plate of small morsels, cleaned with the napkin again, and then fed corn from the automatic corn feeder. Each time an item is brought in front of his face or moved away he watches it with the same expression of confused amazement. As the lead salesman smiles proudly at the success of the machine, the corn feeder begins speeding up out of control. It violently spins and slides back and forth, rubbing against the Tramp’s face and causing his head to bob wildly. The salesmen rush to fix the machine, which periodically stops and starts again, momentarily freezing the Tramp’s face in an absurd expression before beating him again. One of the salesmen goes up next to the Tramp and adjusts something on the mechanism, then calls for lead salesmen to start the machine up again. When it turns back on and even more violently beats the Tramp in the face, the salesman next to him calls back across the room that it is still not working, without even regarding the Tramp or the pain it might be causing him. He finally calls back to just shut it off and walks away, leaving the Tramp there at the whim of the machine. The corn feeder finally stops and settles down into its position, and the Tramp stares at it in shock as the automated napkin swings in and begins gently patting his face. They decide to start again from the soup (the first course), and the machine again malfunctions to abuse the Tramp in the following ways: the soup is spilled down his shirt, the soup is thrown all over his face, the salesman leaves lugnuts on the plate which are force-fed to the Tramp, and he is hit in the face with a pie. Between each abuse the automated napkin gently pats his mouth before finally, at the very end, also malfunctioning and wildly smacking him repeatedly in the face. The Tramp is finally released from the machine and collapses backward onto the floor, but no one goes to help him. Instead, the salesman runs to the President and tries to convince him to let them try again another time, but the President turns him down, saying the machine is just not “practical,” and walking away.
Later that afternoon, the President appears on the control board screen and tells the mechanic again to speed up Section 5. The Tramp now struggles to keep up to speed even without any distractions, and the foreman has to really yell at him to motivate him to move faster. Just as he has caught back up he sneezes and falls behind again, and as he tries to catch up this time he is overwhelmed, misses one of the plates, and chases it to the end of the line. He tries to jump down the chute after the plate, but Big Bill catches him and pulls him out, yelling that he is crazy. As Big Bill drags him back up the line, he continues tightening the bolts as they slide past him. Big Bill tries to call for the line to stop, lets go of the Tramp for a moment to raise his hands, and the Tramp is carried down the line, through the chute, and into the machinery. A cross-section shot of the machine shows him entering the massive gears of the factory’s central machine and traveling through it like one of the pieces from the assembly line, before finally coming to a stop on top of a large gear and trying to tighten its bolts. The foreman puts the machine in reverse and the Tramp travels backward the way he came, re-emerging from the chute onto the assembly line, and continuing to tighten the bolts on the plates in front of him. The line stops moving and the Tramp sits upright, turning imaginary bolts in the air. When Big Bill comes over to see if he is alright, the Tramp tries to tighten Big Bill’s nipples and his nose with his wrenches. As Big Bill clutches his nose, the Tramp dances giddily down the line continuing to tighten bolts. Still dancing, he applies his wrench to the nose of the foreman and another worker who tries to stop him, before dancing back over to Big Bill and twisting his nose one more time. As the secretary passes by, he notices the buttons on the back of her skirt and begins chasing her through the factory. He eventually chases her outside, where he is distracted by the bolts on a fire hydrant and begins to tighten them, allowing the secretary to escape back inside. Down the street, a very proper looking woman walks toward him with hexagonally shaped buttons on her jacket. He looks up from the fire hydrant and begins shaking his wrenches at her, she turns around and begins running away, and he chases her down the street. She turns a corner and runs into a police officer, and gestures at the Tramp, who stops chasing her, turns, and runs from the policeman. He drops his wrenches at the factory door and runs inside, making sure to stop and punch in his time card on the way.
Inside the factory, the Tramp runs past the control board, where the mechanic grabs him. A buzzer goes off, and as the mechanic responds to it by pulling a series of levers, still holding onto the Tramp, the Tramp undoes everything he does as soon as he looks away. The mechanic lets go of the Tramp as he desperately tries to fix the problems that the Tramp has caused, and the Tramp runs to the other side of the control board and begins to wildly flick more switches and turn wheels, dancing while doing so. Machines in the factory begin to spark wildly and catch fire, and the mechanic runs over to where the Tramp is to fix the situation, but as he does so the Tramp begins to spray him with a can of oil. In the President’s office the electrical equipment malfunctions and the screen flashes rapidly while the President frantically presses buttons. The Tramp dances over to the assembly line and sprays the workers there, including Big Bill, in the face with oil. The foreman stops the assembly line and the workers all chase the Tramp, wielding their tools. As they chase him, the Tramp switches the assembly line back on and all the workers rush back to the line and keep working so that no plates will go through unfinished. A worker stops it and they begin chasing him again but he switches it back on and they all rush back to the line. He runs to another line and walks down it spraying everyone in the face before climbing up to a machine’s catwalk, spraying the engineer there, and jumping onto a giant hook hanging above the factory floor and swinging through the factory. The President has now come to the factory floor and the mechanic lowers the hook, but when the Tramp gets to the floor he sprays the President in the face with the oil can and then sprays Big Bill one more time. A police officer and Big Bill then carry him outside to an ambulance that is waiting, but they have failed to take the oil can away from him so he sprays the attendant in the face. They take the can from him, and he pulls a small spray bottle out of his pocket, sprays the policeman in the face once, and hands the spray bottle to Big Bill before climbing into the back of the ambulance.
Analysis
The opening sequence spells out several themes very clearly for the audience, both in words in the intertitles and in the imagery. The ticking of the clock first hints at the obsession with time that prevails in the production-focused world and which threatens to consume our main character, and we are immediately told in the intertitle that we should identify with the hero because of his humanity and individuality, in contrast with the industrial collectivism of the period. The next set of images then supports this criticism of the industrial revolution with an obvious metaphor—the factory workers entering the factory are compared to sheep crowding into a pen. Only one black sheep stands out in the middle of the pack, which foreshadows the way that our hero, the Tramp, is unable to fit in with this sheep-like society. Next, the sequence of establishing shots of the factory are used to set up elements of the setting that will become important later: we are shown that the workers have the practice of punching-in drilled into them; the importance of the mechanic’s control board is highlighted; and we see the foremen controllingly, ominously, watching over the workers.
The President is shown relaxing with a puzzle and cartoon strip in order to juxtapose his behavior with that of the workers, so that the audience will gain sympathy for the overworked Tramp and contempt for the factory owners and managers. Additionally, the name of the company (Electro Steel Corp.) is likely a reference to processes of monopolization across industries that occurred during the industrial revolution, and serves to further characterize the company as a massive, monolithic, indomitable entity. This characterization is taken a step further when it is revealed that the president is able to video call various parts of the factory floor to deliver instructions or watch over parts of the factory, conveying the sense the workers are constantly supervised to ensure they are being pushed to their limits. Already in these first scenes, we get the sense that the president and the company value their production at the expense the health and happiness of their workers, and this is confirmed when the President casually tells the mechanic to speed up section 5, even though it will push the workers in that section beyond their limit. When the camera finds the Tramp tightening bolts in section 5, the sequence is crafted to deliver typical slapstick Chaplin humor at the same time as it furthers the characterization of the factory work as a constant, spirit-crushing struggle. The Tramp does not even have time to scratch his armpit, respond to the foreman, or swat a bee without disrupting the line and facing reprimand. Additionally, the fact that the President is the only character whose voice is heard in the factory further conveys his elevated status and a sense of oppression of voiceless workers.
When the President tells the mechanic to speed up section 5 even further, it becomes clear that a major accident is imminent, because the Tramp can barely keep up with the current speed. This can be considered an example of situational irony, as the President does not realize that by trying to speed up the line even more he will only slow down production because of the time lost when the high speed causes a major accident. Additionally, this request for more speed comes immediately before the Tramp breaks to go to the bathroom and twitches as he walks away from the line, setting up a direct juxtaposition between the President’s greed for higher speed and the effect it has on the mental health of the workers. When the Tramp punches in his time card before using the bathroom we see even more evidence of the Electro Steel Corp's greed and obsession with their bottom line, as they even make workers punch in and out for the bathroom, so that they can dock their pay when they are not on the assembly line. The President’s appearance on the monitor in the bathroom then heightens the Big Brother attitude of the company—not even the bathroom is safe from monitoring—which allows the audience to feel further sympathy for the struggles of the overworked Tramp. Of course, the Tramp is not simply portrayed as a victim throughout these scenes, but is characterized as both hapless and somewhat irreverent toward authority, and these issues are part of his problems in the factory: no other workers seem to struggle quite as much as the Tramp, and some of the times that he slows down the line or gets in trouble it is because he stops to argue with the foreman. Still, we also see that he often gets into trouble for things beyond his control (like the bee landing on his nose), and his gradual breaking down during the factory scene is mostly used to draw out the idea that there is no room in the factory for innocent mistakes or even individuality.
The feeding machine and mechanical salesman, like the technology that allows the president to constantly monitor his factory, are intended to provide examples of futuristic technology that have taken modernization in the wrong direction. Both are at their core anti-individualistic, and can be seen as impersonal and dehumanizing: the mechanical salesman has taken the voice away from the machine’s inventor—though he is presenting the machine—and the machine itself is a way to increase productivity of the workers, turning them into machines themselves rather than individuals. This is brought to a head when the machine is actually tested out on the Tramp, and it is clear that no one involved is even remotely concerned about his well-being. Though much of the humor in this scene is derived from the slapstick elements of the machine’s abuses of the Tramp (including, of course, a pie in the face), the funniest moments come from the juxtaposition of the obvious personal harm inflicted on the Tramp with the complete obliviousness of the mechanics and the president. In one of the shots in the middle of the sequence, for example, a mechanic stands next to the Tramp, casually relaying information to the other mechanic about what the machine is doing, while the Tramp is repeatedly beaten in the face by the corn-feeder in the background. The feeding machine itself mirrors this juxtaposition when it delicately dabs the Tramp with the automatic napkin after each violent assault of one of the feeding mechanisms. That the president only turns down the machine because of its impracticality, and not because of the infringement on the personal freedoms of his workers, or even the danger it poses to them should it malfunction, further indicates that he is unconcerned with their well-being.
The failure of the mechanics to notice the Tramp’s struggle while they demonstrate the machine reveals a key point of this first section of the film: factory workers in this industrializing society are treated as parts of the machine, rather than individuals. Though perhaps primarily for laughs, their obliviousness to the Tramp’s pain conveys the sense that they are treating him like he is part of the feeding machine. Indeed, in the scene mentioned above (in which the Tramp is beaten with the corn-feeder while the mechanic relays information), the mechanic’s behavior is exactly what we would expect of a mechanic concerned only with making a machine work. But it's quite shocking to see him act this way when there is a person inside—and being assaulted by—the machine. This theme is first drawn out when the Tramp twitches after leaving the line, as if the factory machine has embedded something within him and made him less human and more of a robot, and comes to a climax when the Tramp actually gets stuck in the machine a short while later. Here, the imagery hammers home the metaphor in a clear way—the Tramp has been consumed by the machine, and is now a part or product of it.
The Tramp’s final mental breakdown is the culmination of the dehumanizing processes of the factory. The worker’s merging with the machine of the factory, the ultimate goal of the company and the president, has proven too much for him, and his humanity has proven incompatible with the goals of industrialization. In the long breakdown and chase scene that ensues, we see that his forced overworking has transformed his actions into a singular movement (tightening with a wrench), and made him incapable of interacting with the world outside of the factory. At first, it seems he could be revolting against the foreman and the factory, but it becomes clear that he has lost his grip on reality when he is compelled to tighten buttons on the blouses and skirts of women inside and outside the factory. Meanwhile, this scene also constructs several jokes about the sheep-like state into which the factory workers have been driven: the workers rush back to the line when the Tramp restarts it, even though catching him would be more important; the Tramp clocks in when he runs back into the factory while fleeing the police officer; and the mechanic lets the Tramp go to respond to signals on the machine, though it will lead to more problems because of the damage the Tramp inflicts.
