{"id":28468,"date":"2023-01-22T18:17:26","date_gmt":"2023-01-22T17:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=28468"},"modified":"2023-01-22T18:17:41","modified_gmt":"2023-01-22T17:17:41","slug":"a-review-of-the-1936-chaplin-classic-modern-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=28468","title":{"rendered":"A review of the 1936 Chaplin classic &#8220;Modern Times&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\nThis is absolutely a Charlie Chaplin film: he wrote, produced and directed it, he composed the music, and he is the star who has one of the few and small speaking roles (actually it is a gibberish version of a song). Given the date, it should really have been a work of sound, but mostly it is a traditional silent movie complete with text cards, so it is a kind of bridge between the silent and the talkie eras.\n<p>\nIt is the last Chaplin film to feature his trademark little tramp, but this time the nameless character is a factory worker and the story is a satire on the brutalising effects of new technology and unemployment told through a succession of visual and aural gags &#8211; perhaps the most memorable being him being sucked into a huge machine of circling cogs. Some at the time regarded the film as too political and we do see the Chaplin character (accidentally) leading a workers&#8217; protest and being imprisoned as a suspect communist.\n<p>\nThe work highlights the scourge of poverty in this Depression era, although the representation of a gamin&#8217;s life is rather blunted by the obvious beauty of Paulette Goddard (it&#8217;s no wonder that Chaplin married her).\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is absolutely a Charlie Chaplin film: he wrote, produced and directed it, he composed the music, and he is the star who has one of the few and small speaking roles (actually it is a gibberish version of a song). Given the date, it should really have been a work of sound, but mostly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28469,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28468\/revisions\/28469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}