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- Features
New, restored 2K-resolution digital transfer, created in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
New audio commentary by Charlie Chaplin biographer David Robinson
Two new visual essays, by Chaplin historians John Bengtson and Jeffrey Vance
New program on the film's visual and sound effects, with experts Craig Barron and Ben Burtt
Interview from 1992 with Modern Times music arranger David Raksin, plus a selection from the film's original orchestral track
Two segments cut from the film
All at Sea (1933), a home movie by Alistair Cooke featuring Chaplin and actress Paulette Goddard, with a new score by Donald Sosin and new interview with Cooke's daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge
The Rink (1916), a Chaplin two-reeler
For the First Tim (1967), a short Cuban documentary about first-time moviegoers seeing Modern Times
Chaplin Today: "Modern Times" (2003), a program with filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Three theatrical trailers
Plus: a booklet featuring an essay by film critic Saul Austerlitz and a piece by film scholar Lisa Stein that includes excerpts from Chaplin's writing about his 1930s world tour
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Directors
Charles Chaplin
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Producers
Charles Chaplin
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Composers (Music Score)
Charles Chaplin
Alfred Newman
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Screen Writers
Charles Chaplin
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Others
Cinematographer - Ira Morgan
Cinematographer - Roland H. "Rollie" Totheroh
Composer (Music Score) - Charles Chaplin
Composer (Music Score) - Alfred Newman
First Assistant Director - Henry Bergman
Musical Arrangement - David Raksin
Musical Direction/Supervision - Alfred Newman
Production Designer - Charles Hall
Production Designer - Russell J. Spencer
Charles Chaplin's last "silent" film hilariously satirizes Depression-era social ills through the Tramp's disastrous encounters with the industrial age.
Chaplin turns his factory worker's nervous breakdown into comic set pieces involving an automated feeding machine, an inability to stop tightening bolts, and, most famously, his entrapment in machinery gears. In a potent satire of authoritarian idiocy,
Chaplin repeatedly ends up in jail for stumbling into worker riots and "Communist" protests, yet his ability to quell a prison break while accidentally hopped up on cocaine (!!) earns him the sheriff's respect.
Paulette Goddard's fetching Gamin helps
Chaplin find work as a singing waiter, but police intervention leaves their togetherness as their only hope. Accompanied by a
Chaplin-composed score (including
Smile) and synchronized sound effects, numerous bits of business showcase
Chaplin's silent gift for physical comedy, including a department store roller skate and maneuvers with a food tray. In a send-up of talking pictures and technology's dehumanizing effects in general, the only voices heard in the movie (save for
Chaplin's gibberish song and his fellow waiters' warbling) come from the factory's Orwellian telescreen P.A. system, a phonograph, and a radio. Three years in production,
Modern Times became another international success for
Chaplin (though it was banned in Germany and Italy) and one of the signature works of his career. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
