Modern Times (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) [DVD] (1936) Charles Chaplin

Loved this movie! Charlie Chaplin at his best

The quality of this film is pure perfection. Modern Times is AWESOME. My absolute very favorite Charlie Chaplin film!!!

Classic

good

Everything is written on the box in an Asian Language.... Gave it as a gift and not sure how it played.

Modern Times" balances humor and pathos extremely well. For Chaplin, this was his opportunity to criticize authority and progress in the modern industrialized world with its automation and the assembly line, socially elite top management so greedy and mean spirited that two-way television monitors are installed in company bathrooms to keep employees moving and even the advent of talking pictures. Not a minute of the film is wasted; the editing is perfect--I didn't get bored once. In fact, I laughed quite a bit. This is, perhaps, Chaplin's funniest film and easily one of his very best. Chaplin and then-wife Paulette Goddard star in this film and although there is a musical score Paulette Goddard never speaks and Chaplin sings a song in mere gibberish near the end to make fun of talking pictures. Indeed, any talking is done by machines. For example, we hear a phonograph playing a record introducing an employee "feeding machine" which will end the need for any employee lunch breaks, the radio in the jailer's office allows one to hear speech and when the steel factory boss talks it is only through his two-way televised monitoring system that his words can be heard.Chaplin plays "The Little Tramp" character; he is an assembly line worker in a steel mill factory who must tighten bolts faster than anyone ever could. When Chaplin fails to keep up he gets dragged onto the actual assembly line and literally becomes a cog in a wheel! He also faces a test when he has to try out an employee "feeding machine" that doesn't work very well. Chaplin's character eventually goes crazy from the stress and spends time in a hospital to recuperate; he then alternates between disastrous jobs in a modernized world and jail where he is protected from that world although he also begins a sweet romantic relationship with a young homeless women played by Paulette Goddard. The gamin's father has been murdered by a crowd and her younger sisters have been taken away by juvenile officers; this has a terrible impact on her especially since she has a kind and sensitive heart.There's a good deal more that I could tell you but I don't want to spoil it for you. Suffice it to say that there are quite a few humorous scenes including one with Chaplin as a night watchman in a department store who puts on blindfolds to roller-skate, never realizing that he's skating incredibly close to a deep hole in the floor that would have killed him had he fallen into it!It also strikes me as very interesting that the only two people in the film who are truly humane--and human beings--are the nameless Little Tramp and his girlfriend; although they are "low on the totem pole" and unable to fit into modern society I was rooting hard for them! They represent a type of humanity that has been lost in Chaplin's "Modern Times."While this is clearly a two DVD product, as of this writing I notice that Amazon indicates this is only a one DVD edition of the film. Perhaps Amazon made a typographical error. Just in case, though, confirm with the seller or Amazon that you will be getting the two DVD edition of "Modern Times" before you purchase this.The second DVD has many extra features on it; and they're all good. I particularly liked the documentary entitled "Chaplin Today: Modern Times;" the two deleted scenes which include Chaplin's entire nonsense song; "Behind the Scenes in the Machine Age" and the short documentary footage of some very poor Cubans watching their first movie, "Modern Times.""Modern Times" is one of the best films I've ever seen. Charles Chaplin is at his best here and Paulette Goddard makes a wonderful leading actress. I highly recommend this film for Chaplin fans; newcomers to Chaplin's movies; comedies that mix humor with social and political messages and classic silent films with both comedy and tragedy.

While I am thankful for this great restoration of Modern Times and many extras on my high end Sony blu-Ray player the picture is cropped especially on the bottom. In addition the menus are a ridiculous size probably the equivalent of 48 point font making it difficult to navigate,