STORY OF THE SHOT
Modern Times
CHAPLIN’S RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
WORDS IAN FREER
Main: Cog in the machine: Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp.
© Roy Export S.A.S
THE ORIGIN
As a 12-year-old boy, Charlie Spencer Chaplin worked for three weeks at Straker’s, a London printing and stationery firm. On his first day, faced with a 20-foot-long Wharfedale printing press, he became a nervous wreck. “He felt the enormous machine was going to devour him,” says Jeffrey Vance, film historian and author of Chaplin: Genius Of The Cinema. “This fear never left him.”
More than just staying with him, the scare inspired one of the most memorable images in a career littered with indelible moments. Partly inspired by the mechanised Ford plant in Detroit where workers succumbed to mental-health issues, Modern Times (1936) sees Chaplin’s Little Tramp character working on a manic production line at the Electro Steel Corporation. Suffering a nervous breakdown, the Tramp throws himself down a chute into the bowels of the factory and is pulled through a series of cogs and wheels. “He knew this was going to be a great set-piece and an important image to sell the film,” says Vance. So, he hired the best in the business to envisage it.