摩登时代观后感
"Modern Times" begins with a shot of sheep going down a runway followed by a shot of workers entering a factory… Charlie is set down in the midst of industrial civilization,which is dominated by machinery and in which men are organized into mechanical units,Capital and Labor… Charlie's real enemies are no longer the Cop or the Boss,with whom he can always enter into some human relation,but a vast impersonality,invisible and invulnerable…
"Modern Times" offered a variety of minor attractions:it featured Chaplin's wife,Paulette Goddard; it had wonderful gags; it indulged in tricks of sound which came to the very edge of being dialog… But what did the picture mean,what was it trying to say?Because Chaplin charged his usual enormous percentage for it,and because of foreign receipts,"Modern Times" made money,but exhibitors were not happy at the limited audience turnout… For the majority,the new Charlie was too serious; for the minority,not serious enough…
Since the picture seemed to be about the dehumanizing effect of machinery,intellectuals called upon Chaplin to join them in reorganizing machine culture to some more human scale of things…
Off the screen,Chaplin said nothing… On the screen,his anarchic hostility for any kind of machine culture expressed itself in scenes like that in which Charlie is fed by a machine and that in which,crazed by the assembly line,he runs into the street,his arms moving convulsively like two pistons… Charlie the rebel,Charlie the poet,Charlie the invincibly human,had been turned into a machine.