
Modern Times
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
1936
Chaplin's farewell to silence, made nine years into the sound era out of pure stubbornness: the factory gears swallow him, and he answers the talkies entirely on his own terms.
★ 8.7

Chaplin's farewell to silence, made nine years into the sound era out of pure stubbornness: the factory gears swallow him, and he answers the talkies entirely on his own terms.

Astaire and Rogers never danced better than in the last number here, which they shot until her feet bled: the plot is nonsense and the dancing is the argument for the whole genre.

Frank Capra and Gary Cooper at the height of the New Deal: a tuba-playing greeting card poet inherits twenty million dollars and finds out what New York wants from him.