Top 250 Challenge: 177

Modern Times (1936)
Number 68 on IMDb's Top 250

Charlie turns against modern society, the machine age, and progress. Firstly we see him frantically trying to keep up with a production line, tightening bolts. He is selected for an experiment with an automatic feeding machine, but various mishaps leads his boss to believe he has gone mad, and Charlie is sent to a mental hospital... When he gets out, he is mistaken for a communist while waving a red flag, sent to jail, foils a jailbreak, and is let out again. Hilarity ensues. We follow Charlie through many more escapades before the film is out.

Trivia: Supposedly was to be Charles Chaplin's first full sound film, but instead, sound is used in a unique way: we hear spoken voices only when they come from mechanical devices, a symbol of the film's theme of technology and dehumanization. Specifically, voices are heard from: The videophones used by the factory president,
The phonographic Mechanical Salesman, The radio in the prison warden's office. Charles Chaplin allows the Tramp to speak on camera for the first time during the restaurant scene, but insisted that what the Tramp says be universal. Therefore, the song the Tramp sings is in gibberish, but it is possible to follow the story he tells by watching his hand gestures. France's Tobis Studios sued Chaplin for plagiarizing the conveyor belt sequence from René Clair's À nous la liberté (1931) but dropped the suit when Clair declared himself honored by the tribute, saying, "I have certainly borrowed enough from him."

After 8 years of talking movies, only Charlie Chaplin would be able to make a "silent" movie. I liked the use of voices only coming from technology. And Paulette Goddard was pretty hot as the gamin. I'm pretty sure this is the first full Chaplin movie I have seen. I have seen clips and stuff but never a full movie. Although it is predictable, it's still a pretty funny movie.