How does “Modern Times” define the core values of Chaplin’s Little Tramp character?
Modern Times (1936) features Charlie Chaplin’s final performance as the Little Tramp character. The film’s final title card reads, “Buck up—Never say die. We’ll get along!” That phrase would sit through history as a farewell to the character and, on a larger level, to the silent film genre as a whole.
As the film shifts from its opening scenes of science fiction and dystopian workplaces, it examines the culture and economic woes of Americans during the Great Depression. The story becomes one of the Little Tramp and the gamin (Paulette Goddard), a spunky young homeless woman sentenced to thievery and vagrancy thanks to economic hardship. The two illustrate a story depicting the cost of the depression on human lives and the lengths to which people went to stay afloat. Whether spending a night together inside a department store or feigning the life of a happy couple inside a run-down shack, the two are an endearing yet somber realization of the era.
The most important element of the film is the Little Tramp himself—Chaplin chose to keep this film mostly silent, as pantomime is the Tramp’s most effective means of conveyance. And while the Tramp and the gamin lead a life of poverty, frequent arrests, and destitution, the Tramp’s quizzical nature keeps the mood light. The smile rarely leaves his face for more than a quick flash, and he enters and exits every situation with the same waggish amusement. This is truly the heart of the character, and perhaps no film illustrates his power more profoundly.
The closing shot of Modern Times, wherein the two characters are once again unemployed and wandering down the street, shows the Tramp looking in the gamin’s eyes, insisting everything will be okay. Modern Times as a whole echoes Chaplin’s discontent about the effects of technology on industry, culture, and art but acknowledges the inevitability of progress, to which Chaplin himself would adapt in his future pictures. The Tramp mirrors this optimism about the future, despite the present’s appearing rather grim.
The final title card’s text (“Buck up—Never say die. We’ll get along!”) encapsulates Chaplin’s intention for the film and subsequently defines the Tramp character himself. Chaplin’s Tramp teaches us that happiness is discovered by maintaining a positive outlook, valuing the powers of human imagination, and defending individual liberties. The Tramp’s last “spoken” words, if we read his lips in his last onscreen moment, appear to be “Smile, c’mon!” The legacy of the Tramp is delineated and preserved in the spirit of those words.