A current movie, from the 30's

Modern Times (1936)

Had a lengthy discussion with a friend of mine wether the blu-ray treatment of old black and white movies is actually worth it or not. I said of course it is, it doesn't matter wether it's in color or not, higher resolution and cleaner picture are always a good thing. My friend's argument was that if there even is a good enough master print for the movie to do a proper transfer, it'll result into the movies suffering from the fact that as you can see the primitive film making techniques better you'll lose some of the magic in them. So we decided to watch an old classic recently released in blu-ray to find out how it works. Well, neither of us were wrong. Indeed you could see some of the tricks a bit easier and thus you focus on them a bit too much, but still it didn't really matter that much as a good looking black and white shot will surely look better in high definition. Anyway, so much for HD, lets focus on the movie itself. It's stunningly accurate even today, or maybe especially today as the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. So unfortunate as it is, a movie that criticizes big corporations and the class differences will never get old. It's a story about a factory worker who gets into a series of mishaps that lead him from a mental hospital to jail where he is released to unemployment only to find his true love, who has not one bit easier life. So the basic storyline is a tragedy, but it's told as a comedy which suits it very well. It's not the funniest of Chaplin movies, but the story and the themes surely make up for it in spades. Within the criticism against the machines that take over people's work you can actually see Chaplin's own criticism towards the technical direction movies were taking at the time of the film. It's a weird mix of a silent movie and a "talkie" with title cards and bits of dialog sounds as well. Though each time someone actually speaks, it's never anything meaningful, kind of like a joke against the sound itself and how it effects the viewer. This movie is remarkable in another way as well, it's the last time we see Chaplin in the Tramp character which everyone recognizes him from. So in a sense it's also Chaplin's swan song for his most iconic character from the silent era before it was over run by technology.
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