Modern Times
By Kit Macdonald
Twenty-two years after he first appeared on screen, Modern Times marked the final appearance for Charlie Chaplin's iconic silent film character The Tramp, a good-hearted, bumbling vagrant who strives to behave with the manners and dignity of a gentleman despite his lowly social status. The character is so deeply ingrained in film history that, to many, The Tramp and Chaplin himself are almost interchangeable.
Modern Times proved to be a worthy send-off for The Tramp. It was recognised as an exceptional piece of work on its release, is now considered one of the best films of all time, and in 1989 it became one of the first 25 films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". A "part-talkie" (Chaplin wrote a dialogue script for it originally but soon reverted to the silent format with synchronised sound effects and sparse dialogue), Modern Times finds The Tramp wrestling with mechanisation on the assembly line on which he is employed, leading to the famous "stuck in the machine" scene and setting off a wonderfully chaotic series of subsequent events.