--- title: "Modern Times" year: 1936 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/modern-times" fi1m_id: "modern-times" imdb_id: "tt0027977" tmdb_id: 3082 wikidata_id: "Q45602" fi1m_score: 88 critics_score: 80 critics_reviews: 11 published: "2026-09-15" updated: "2026-09-18T08:38:32.559872+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Modern Times (1936) Directed by Charlie Chaplin · 1h 27m · MPA G · Comedy, Drama, Romance ## Identity Modern Times - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/modern-times - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** modern-times - **IMDb ID:** tt0027977 - **TMDB ID:** 3082 - **Wikidata ID:** Q45602 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027977/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/3082, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q45602 **Fi1m score: 88** · Critics 80 from 11 reviews *In a sentence:* The factory has considered every possible improvement except letting Charlie Chaplin eat his lunch in peace > Charlie Chaplin makes factory work painfully funny, with physical comedy precise enough to expose the cruelty behind the machinery. The story wanders and the romance gets less attention, but we recommend *Modern Times* warmly. ## Synopsis Charlie Chaplin plays the Tramp, a factory worker trying to keep pace with mechanised production and find a way through poverty. Work means keeping up with a conveyor belt; outside the factory, making a living brings its own difficulties. Paulette Goddard plays the Gamin, whose struggle to get by draws her towards him amid the hardship and unrest of the Great Depression. *Modern Times* follows their search for work, security and companionship, moving between industrial satire, physical comedy and romance. Having enough to eat is as pressing a concern as finding happiness. ## Review *Modern Times* is a sharp, funny film about how difficult it becomes to behave like a person when work demands that everyone behave like equipment. Charlie Chaplin, directing his own screenplay, gives the Tramp a factory job and makes the effort of keeping up the basis of the comedy. We recommend it warmly, though the story lacks the discipline of the individual routines. Its sympathy for the worker is clear without making him solemn, sensible or especially well suited to the job. The conveyor-belt scenes depend on Chaplin making repeated movements funny without making them look effortless. His precision lets us see both the worker’s determination and the limits of what his body can manage. We laughed, then felt uneasy during the feeding-machine sequence. Watching a man subjected to a feeding machine makes the contempt for his comfort difficult to ignore. Chaplin keeps the joke going long enough for us to notice what we are laughing at. The cinematography, credited to Bud Thackery, Ira H. Morgan and Roland Totheroh, serves those routines well. We can watch the performer in relation to the machinery, which matters more here than making the factory look impressive. Charles D. Hall’s production design gives the equipment enough presence to make the worker seem vulnerable without swallowing the performance. The factory scenes work because we can follow what the machinery demands of the body, and see the effort involved in trying to obey. The editing, by Chaplin and Willard Nico, allows a physical joke the time it needs: we can recognise the difficulty before being asked to laugh at the response. The joins between episodes are less satisfying, and Chaplin’s screenplay does not sustain the concentration of the factory material. The film sometimes feels ready to start again with another routine when we want it to develop what is already there. At 87 minutes it hardly drags, but it can feel assembled from favourite passages. Paulette Goddard’s Gamin gives the concern with poverty a more personal purpose, and her presence makes the prospect of companionship matter. She meets Chaplin’s comic energy, and we can understand why these two people might want to face their difficulties together. Even so, the romance is thinner than the comedy, and the screenplay gives the pair less room together than their appeal deserves. Goddard is engaging enough to make that shortage noticeable whenever the relationship has to carry the film’s more tender feelings. Chaplin’s score gives those tender passages some warmth without making the physical comedy feel heavy. It is useful work in a film whose shifts between industrial satire and romance are not always easy. Judged as physical comedy, this is unusually attentive to the effort involved in ordinary work, giving the elaborate routines something recognisable beneath their ingenuity. The humour never suggests that people deserve hardship because they cannot keep up. Watch it in company, where Chaplin’s timing has a chance to work on several people at once. The wandering story is worth tolerating for the factory scenes alone. We would hesitate to suggest it for a staff training evening. *Fi1m score 88, published 15 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews are uniformly positive across eight decades, and the praise gathers around the same things: Chaplin’s pantomime, the factory sequences with the conveyor belt and the feeding machine, and the way the film puts a face on the Depression. Several critics single out the department store roller-skating and the waiter’s dance-floor climax. The notices from 1936 treat it as a welcome return of the Tramp after five years away; the later ones read it as his farewell. The reservations are mild and cluster around structure and sentiment. The New York Times finds the construction loose, with industrial satire and older antics not quite joined; The New Yorker thinks the scenes with the gamine and her family land less surely than the comedy; Eye for Film calls the romance underdeveloped and ranks the film below City Lights. Time Out observes that Chaplin’s political naivety now looks as striking as his pantomime. Nobody dislikes it; the spread runs only from warm to adoring. ## Straight answers **Is Modern Times worth watching?** *Modern Times* is worth watching for anyone who enjoys physical comedy with something on its mind, and we scored it 88. Charlie Chaplin's factory routines are precise enough to be funny and uncomfortable at once, and at 87 minutes it hardly drags. The story wanders between set pieces and the romance with Paulette Goddard gets less room than it deserves. **How long is Modern Times, and what is it rated?** *Modern Times* runs 1h 27m and is rated G by the MPA in the US. It is a comedy and drama film. **Where can I watch Modern Times in the US?** *Modern Times* is streaming on Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Hulu and The Roku Channel in the US, and it is also available to rent from Amazon Prime Video from $3.99. It leaves HBO Max on 30 September. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service. **How does Modern Times compare to The Apartment?** *Modern Times* and [*The Apartment*](https://film.one/film/the-apartment) are both comedies about how work makes private happiness difficult, but Chaplin's is silent physical comedy set on a factory floor, while Billy Wilder's is a talkative, bruised office romance. Chaplin's film is the funnier and more inventive; Wilder's is sadder and more patient with its characters. Choose Chaplin for laughter, Wilder for a romance that hurts. **What should I watch after Modern Times?** After *Modern Times*, try [*Playtime*](https://film.one/film/playtime) (1967, Fi1m 88): Jacques Tati lets modern buildings inconvenience everyone, with room to inspect each joke. Then [*The Apartment*](https://film.one/film/the-apartment) (1960, Fi1m 91): Office hierarchy makes private happiness difficult in Billy Wilder’s bruised romantic comedy; and [*Sorry to Bother You*](https://film.one/film/sorry-to-bother-you) (2018, Fi1m 81): Workplace ambition leads somewhere considerably stranger in Boots Riley’s angry, inventive satire. ### Reviews we read (11) - **The AV Club**, Scott Tobias (A): The critic praises the film's synthesis of comedy, politics, and romance, highlighting the Tramp's dream sequence with the gamine as particularly poignant. They note it views progress through jaundiced eyes and brings a face to the Great Depression. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/modern-times-1798166805) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (90/100, inferred): Ebert celebrates the enduring appeal of Chaplin's 1936 classic during its re-release, noting packed houses and audiences applauding at the end. He highlights how the film cleverly introduces limited sound effects and voices through media like television and recordings while preserving the Tramp's silent pantomime comedy. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/modern-times-1972) - **The Guardian**, Robert Kemp (90/100, inferred): The critic hails Chaplin as the greatest artist of the silent screen and deems Modern Times one of his very best films for its fresh comic inventions and satire of mass production. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/media/from-the-archive-blog/2011/may/25/review-chaplin-modern-times-1936) - **Variety**, Abel. (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it grand fun and sound entertainment from the world's top pantomimist, a box-office certainty. It highlights the one-man creative control and standout comedy bits like the feeding machine and department store scenes. [Read](https://variety.com/1936/film/reviews/modern-times-2-1200411268/) - **Slant Magazine**, Bill Weber (85/100, inferred): Chaplin's film is a treasure of Depression America's zeitgeist and the curtain call of the movies' first comedic icon. The review highlights the precise pantomime, social commentary on industrialization and the oppressed, and the piercingly sweet ending tableau of love and solidarity. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/modern-times/) - **Empire**, David Parkinson (80/100, inferred): The critic views Modern Times as an ambitious and frequently uproarious comedy that targets the dehumanising effects of mechanised industry and Hollywood's film factories. They single out the energetic factory conveyor-belt scenes and rollerskating sequence for particular praise. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/modern-times-review/) - **The New Yorker**, John C. Mosher (70/100, inferred): The review finds 'Modern Times' mostly in the old Chaplin vein despite contemporary social commentary, with superb laughs from factory and other sequences. It complains that the poignance involving the gamin and her family feels less successful than the comedy. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1936/02/15/modernized-times) - **The New York Times**, Frank S. Nugent (70/100, inferred): The critic welcomes Chaplin's return after five years with this comedy that restores the beloved Tramp to the screen. It singles out the classic Chaplin physical comedy and gag sequences for praise while noting the film's loose structure and mix of industrial satire with old-school antics. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1936/02/06/archives/heralding-the-return-after-an-undue-absence-of-charlie-chaplin-in.html) - **The Times**, Peter Davalle (70/100, inferred): The critic highlights Modern Times as a powerful silent denunciation of the machine age and its dehumanizing effects, while praising Chaplin above all as a master of slapstick comedy rather than a propagandist. The film is noted as the Tramp's final outing. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/comment/register/article/silents-are-golden-lbvjzvjt3zt) - **Time Out**, GB (70/100, inferred): The review presents Modern Times as the final outing for Chaplin's Tramp character, reviving antics from earlier shorts in a framework about humanity's pursuit of happiness amid factory perils, poverty and Depression-era unrest. It notes that the tramp survives these challenges, while observing that Chaplin's political and philosophical naivety now appears as striking as his pantomime skill. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/modern-times) - **Eye for Film**, James Benefield (70/100, inferred): The critic finds Modern Times a strong, socially aware Chaplin comedy with iconic moments and virtuoso comic timing, though it is somewhat overshadowed by City Lights. They single out the inventive factory machine sequences and the waiter's dance-floor climax for particular praise while noting the underdeveloped romance. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/modern-times-film-review-by-james-benefield) ## Details - **Director:** Charlie Chaplin - **Director:** Charlie Chaplin - **Screenplay:** Charlie Chaplin - **Cinematography:** Roland Totheroh, Ira H. Morgan, Bud Thackery - **Editor:** Willard Nico, Charlie Chaplin - **Music:** Charlie Chaplin - **Production design:** Charles D. Hall - **Producer:** Charlie Chaplin - **Cast:** Charlie Chaplin as The Tramp (A Factory Worker); Paulette Goddard as A Gamin; Henry Bergman as Cafe Proprietor; Tiny Sandford as Big Bill; Chester Conklin as Mechanic; Hank Mann as Burglar; Stanley Blystone as Gamin's Father; Al Ernest Garcia as President of the Electro Steel Corp. - **Runtime:** 1h 27m - **Certificate (MPA):** G - **Release (the US):** 12 February 1936 - **Genres:** Comedy, Drama, Romance - **Budget:** $2 million - **Box office:** $2 million ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: streaming - HBO Max: streaming, leaving 2026-09-30 - Amazon Prime Video: free - Hulu: add-on, hd - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $19.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-15.* Also available in: BR, CA, DK, ES, FI, GB, IE, IN, IT, NO, SE, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *The Cameraman* (1928): Buster Keaton turns another precarious job into a succession of exact physical jokes. - *Playtime* (1967), Fi1m 88: Jacques Tati lets modern buildings inconvenience everyone, with room to inspect each joke. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/playtime.md) - *The Apartment* (1960), Fi1m 91: Office hierarchy makes private happiness difficult in Billy Wilder’s bruised romantic comedy. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-apartment.md) - *The Man Without a Past* (2002): Aki Kaurismäki finds dry humour and companionship among people living with little. - *Sorry to Bother You* (2018), Fi1m 81: Workplace ambition leads somewhere considerably stranger in Boots Riley’s angry, inventive satire. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/sorry-to-bother-you.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/modern-times