Friday, January 11, 2008

Kevin's Post on Himself and Modern Times

Hey everyone. I'm Kevin Mohler. I'm a Pharmacy major and a sophomore. I enjoy rock climbing, video games and long walks on the beach. Unfortunately for me there aren't too many beaches in Pittsburgh, so I mainly just stick to the first two.
I found Modern Times to be very interesting. Primarily because it was the first silent film that I have seen as well as the first full movie with Charlie Chaplin. Since this was a silent film there was almost no dialogue and as a result much of the story was portrayed through body language. I was really impressed with the amount of information that could be conveyed simply through facial expressions and gestures. Also the music becomes much more important when there is no dialogue. It had a much more active role than music would in a movie today.
As for the dialogue that was in the movie, it was all either synthesized or heard through a record player or radio. There was no direct speaking. I think the purpose of this was to emphasize the fact that technology can often be dehumanizing. This seems to be one of the main themes of the movie. This is shown especially well with the employee feeding machine. The operators of the machine don't really care about the person being fed, but only about whether their machine works.
I have to agree with Joe's post about Charlie's final song. Although I didn't find the build up to be that dull, I did think it was strange that the song would be in French when the rest of the movie was in English. I have to believe there was a reason for this, but I simply don't see it.

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