(Charles Chaplin, US 1936, 87 min., 35mm)

Labor Series. Chaplin directed, starred in, and scored this nearly silent classic indictment of industrialization and modernization. Costarring Paulette Goddard, Modern Times views the increasing dehumanization of the workplace through Chaplin’s everyman hero, the Little Tramp—a figure increasingly recognizable in Depression-era images of breadlines and vagrants. The scenes of Chaplin enmeshed in the cogs of an assembly line will forever remain a metaphor for our modern condition. The perfectly crafted physical humor has delighted audiences for decades, while Chaplin’s vision of the common man adjusting to a newly industrialized and urbanized world makes this one of the most thought-provoking motion pictures of the depression era. Note start time.