Chaplin wrote dialogue for Modern Times, then refused to let the Tramp talk
By 1934 sound had taken over Hollywood, and Chaplin drafted a dialogue script for his next film. His tests persuaded him the Little Tramp would lose his worldwide appeal if he spoke. So Modern Times stayed mostly silent, and the only time audiences hear the Tramp's voice, he is singing gibberish.
The idea took shape while Chaplin was touring Europe to promote City Lights. He saw the Depression's toll on the continent and talked with Mahatma Gandhi about technology. He could not follow Gandhi's general hostility to machines, but he accepted that machinery run purely for profit had thrown people out of work. The result, released in 1936, follows the Tramp from a factory assembly line that breaks his nerves through prison, a string of lost jobs and a friendship with Ellen, an orphan played by Paulette Goddard.
Filming ran from October 11, 1934, to August 30, 1935, a very long shoot for the era. Most scenes were filmed at 18 frames per second and shown at 24, which speeds up the slapstick. In the famous blindfolded roller-skating scene the drop beside Chaplin is a matte painting; he was skating on an ordinary floor, and at one point a wheel briefly slips behind the painted edge. A prison scene involving smuggled cocaine was bold at a time when the Production Code banned showing illegal drugs.
Chaplin wrote the music himself, often humming tunes that the young arranger David Raksin had to turn into a synchronised score. Alfred Newman helped too, until the two fell out near the end of recording. One romantic theme later picked up lyrics and became the standard Smile, first recorded by Nat King Cole. The film's single burst of Chaplin's voice is a nonsense version of the French song Je cherche après Titine, made up of words that sound half French and half Italian.
It became one of the biggest earners of 1936, with 1.8 million dollars in North American rentals. Its picture of industry proved divisive. Joseph Goebbels banned it in Nazi Germany as communist, while Graham Greene argued that Chaplin showed problems without offering political answers. Sartre, Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty borrowed its title for their journal, Les Temps modernes, and it was among the first 25 films chosen for the National Film Registry.
Source: Modern Times (film)
