MODERN TIMESCHARLIE CHAPLIN
MODERN TIMES
17mentions
4recommended by
15HN commenters
2016–2025first – last mentioned
27% recommend67% neutral7% critical
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…the point that I can truly enjoy a lot of silent dramas, but IMO the comedies are far more approachable for a modern audience. Good gateway drug. Just off the more famous films (The Great Dictator and Modern Times and maybe City Lights for Chaplin, or The General for Keaton, say) I'd recommend The Kid for Chaplin, and Sherlock, Jr. for Keaton. And of course both made numerous short films, in addition to their features.…
on “Charlie Chaplin Dot Com” ↗If you like Simone Giertz' work and you haven't seen it yet please go see the movie 'Modern Times' by Charles Chaplin.
on “Simone Giertz makes a living creating shitty robots (2016) [video]” ↗Charlie Chaplin's movies. Modern Times is very funny, but the end scene. I cry every time. City lights, ditto, the end scene is so strong. And Limelight. And the Gold rush...
on “Crying” ↗…Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940) 15. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, 1975) 14. His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940) 13. To Be or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942) 12. Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936) 11. The Big Lebowski (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1998) 10. The General (Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton, 1926) 9. This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984) 8. Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967) 7.…
…the drudge. [...] 'Efficiency' means large-scale productions, machinery as fully developed as possible, and high wages. Of course, he ended up being wrong and Metropolis (along with Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times) ended up being eerily right. Modern life is a drudge. People don't toil in the fields, but they waste away in office buildings. The internet wasn't the harbinger of a new Enlightenment, but often does…
on “H. G. Wells reviews "Metropolis" (1927)” ↗Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times has a section where the tramp is working on an assembly line and parts are coming down the conveyor. He has at it and manages to get 10 yards ahead of the conveyor, and has a rest. Just as he is relaxing,…
on “How should mathematics be taught to non-mathematicians? (2012)” ↗…subject to the criteria of «is it good for the corporation?». Or, is it good for me financially. Which, considering how work is increasingly central to our lives is unfortunate. We’re Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times without the factory.
on “Ask HN: Are you friends with your manager?” ↗I was thinking of that scene in Modern Times where Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Tramp’ gets hired as a security guard.
on “Heuristics that almost always work” ↗…bottle in the delivery truck? These are likely seen as crazy ideas, but perhaps they should get ahead of the curve and make an attractive place to work instead of trying to treat Charlie Chaplin's movie Modern Times as a "How To Manage" work... The combination of arrogance and utter out-of-touch cluelessness of management/MBAs, thinking everything runs just on their numbers, never ceases to amaze. Just because…
on “Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire” ↗…that really hits home. Since the dawn of computers, people have been handing over more and more of their thinking to processes and machines, becoming more robotic. One of the major motifs of Chaplin's Modern Times. It was released in 1936. It's also, um, kinda something Karl Marx was concerned about. So. Here's a famous sequence from the film, in which Chaplin's character is volun-told to try out a new efficiency-improving…
on “The reason content creators worry about ChatGPT” ↗…US unemployment rate peaked at 25%. So, yeah, things were (much) worse during the Great Depression. I have no data on whether people were depressed then (though the final lines of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, his message to the country, were "Buck up" and then "Smile"). But I know that it left deep marks on people. When there just wasn't stuff, and there was no promise that there ever would be stuff, it…
on “U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs” ↗"The Crowd" (1928) is on YouTube, if you want to watch it. "Modern Times" with Charlie Chaplin has much the same theme, is much better known, but not as good.
on “A Man and the Crowd (1928)” ↗This is exactly like that famous tweet about the torment nexus[1], but they're trying to make the factory from Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times[2]. [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus [2] https://criterioncloseup.com/2015/06/14/modern-times-1936-ch...
on “'Hey Number 17 '” ↗Before Fight Club was the Hitchhiker's Guide "B-Ark". Before the B-Ark was Robads 1000 Clowns. Before 1000 Clowns was Chaplin's Modern Times. Before Modern Times was ... pretty much all of Dickens's ouvre. And that potted list omits much. Laughing at the futility of present-day enterprise, whatever the present or the enterprise, is a long-standing…
on “How the US built 5k ships in WWII” ↗People are afraid that instead of skilled craft guild members they will become assembly line workers like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. And in 10 years unemployed like people in the Rust Belt.
on “Nobody knows how to build with AI yet” ↗