Dear all,Short Introduction: Industrial Labour, cinema and legal history
May 6, 2010
Discussion about the movie.
From Europe to America and Back to Europe:
- 1936 Chaplin as “European” observer: a selection of themes of legal historical relevance throught his view of the American industrial world.
- Back to the beginning. An European point of view on American industrial relations at the beginning of the century: weberian perspectives 1904.
Suggested readings
Steven J. Ross, Struggles for the screen: Workers, Radicals, and the political Uses of Silent Film, in "The American Historical Review", vol. 96, n. 2 (1991), pp. 333-367
Carlo Nitsch, Prospettive dalla riflessione weberiana sulle condizioni di lavoro negli Stati Uniti, in "Materiali per una storia della cultura giuridica moderna", 2007 /2, pp. 337 ss.
Prof. Vano's CV
Cristina Vano (Napoli 1961)
Associate Professor, since 2002, of Medieval and Modern Legal History at the Law Faculty of the University of Naples "Federico II". Member of the academic committee of the Research Doctorate in “Roman Law and Roman Law Tradition: the foundations of European law”. Her research focuses on Savigny and the Historical School with special regard to the construction processes of European nineteenth century legal science and to the communication strategies of scientific knowledge. Her book Il nostro autentico Gaio. Strategie della scuola storica alle origini della romanistica moderna (Napoli 2000) has been recently translated into german (Frankfurt 2008). Moreover she is interested in the history of Italian and European juridical culture of the XIX and XX century, with particular attention for such themes as the use of comparative methods , the professionalization of the jurist, the history of Labour Law.
Hi all!Today i've really enjoyed the film"Modern times", because i think it is a good point to start to reflect:about our society that could be considered as the the development of Charlie Chaplin's one, about conseguenses of an industry without rules on our individualism, about the search of happyness, about the theme of hunger that could be considered as the main character in this film.I really would like to point out the fact that the first thing that shocked me watching the film was the lost of individualism in a industrial era that focused its attention only on production and not on the development of human abilities:as we can notice from the film, characters are not considered as people, but as machines and divided into working sections( Section 5, for example)and pushed to do ridiculous things without understanding them only to have a piece of bread to eat.They work runnig( without the respect of any humanitarian law) to win something to have for lunch,without using or taking advantages of their creative capabilities.Althought in my opinion it is a really funny film because of genial characters' mimicry and gestures,in my opinion the real aim of this masterpiece is to provoke bitter laughter on an empty society only focused on gain.
RispondiEliminaClaudia Nardinocchi
Hi all!
RispondiEliminaI enjoyed this movie too! I had seen it many years ago but I remembered well a lot funny moments...
By the way, as Claudia pointed out before, the message of this movie is very important: the position of the man in the modern hera. Of course we can say that today, fortunately, there are better work conditions and labour rights than some decades ago. But the reflection hasn't to stop.
One of the most important juridical conquests, I think, is the overcoming of the old conception of the worker like it was traced by the original civil codes and labour laws, where the worker was artificially considered like a contracting party on the same level of its employer. It's very important that today the labour law recognized that the position of the worker is not the same and that he needs a specific protection, so receiving the real substantial factors: the old contractualist scheme where there were 2 subjects on the same level wasn't substantially natural, but artificial. The law cannot be apart from the substantial difference between a man who offers its work and a man who offers an employ. There's the human person involved in it, with all its consequences.
I think that today, however, there's such an economic crisis that we must be careful: we have another working emergency: the precarious work, which doesn't allow a lot of people to plan their own future in a sure long-term perpesctive.
So, even if we have not all the rude industries of the Chaplin's "Modern Times", we have not to understimate the importance of is message. It's 100 % actual.
In "Modern Times" we have seen how the second industrial revolution (that is the development of the assembly line and the migration from country to city)has brought to alienation of the man as Marx substained.
RispondiEliminaInfact this alienation in the film is shown by the madness of the protagonist during his work.
Charlie Chaplin explain in a funny way (as he do in his other movie "The Great Dictator")the important and sad topic of alienation that is linked with others main themes like hunger and the pursuit of happyness.
I'd like to underline also another message that the movie send: the ability of the man to face the problems of daily life,and in my opinion,this hidden message is important for the crisis we are living today.
Hi everybody!
RispondiEliminaI saw the movie last night and it was really great! The way in which unemployment is described is really realistic and unfortunately is evergreen. Watching people striking on the street made me immediately thinking about nowadays situation. We can substitute those people in the black and white movie with the people we see in today's television news.
The uneasy contest is very similar to the Argentinean one during the financial crack, and the Greek one of nowadays.
We can also see some of the consequences of the crisis, which makes people commit crimes because of the hunger: "We are not robbers, we are just hungry".
Another aspect that I would like to point out is the use of recommendation, that is shown as a prize for Charlot for his good behaviour in the jail. Thanks to this he gets more jobs than the others, we cannot know if he is better, instead we understand that the paper he brings lets him get the jobs.
To me the movie shows a blind (bad) justice because Charlot is imprisoned several times with neither a trial nor an interrogatory; once he is driven to jail because he is supposed to be the strike’s head.
About labour rights, we can see that striking is crime and workers are like machines, they cannot stop a minute, the boss even tries to use a machine to feed them in order to avoid any waste of time during lunch time, workers are like robot...
See you later!
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RispondiEliminaI think Chaplin has described perfectly the alienation that the worker lives when he becomes just a number, and lives the depersonalization of the assembly line. He uses a humoristic way to show us this condition, but we can see behind the smiles, behind the repetitive gestures of the workmen all their cynical exploitation and their dehumanization. Humoristic means are also used to show us the situation of the unemployed and the poorness that characterized those years of crysis. I think it’s the best way to lend a message to the audience, you smile all time but you are learning something specific, something sad and real.
RispondiEliminaWe have talked about the themes of the movie, so i'm not going back on them, but I want to focus on the “grammelot”, a new expression for me. For what I’ve understood, it is a theatrical technique that allows us (in a certain sense) to transmit a message understandable by all, without using a real language but a set of sounds, words and phonemes without real meaning. It is what we see for instance in one of the few scenes with “sonoro”, when Chaplin sings “la Titina”
(here the link, too funny http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUxg162QbDw)
I’ve read some lines about Grammelot, and I’ve found another (famous) example, the discourse of Hinkel in “the Great Dictator”, where Chaplin speaks in a german-alike language. We don’t understand a word but the gestures and the intonation of the voice are quite sufficient!
(if you have 5 minutes, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_B0frqP250&feature=related)
We can maybe call it the art of be understandable without speaking! I think today many people should revalue it, we hear too many words, and see so little substance!
Alessia Guaitoli
Hi!
RispondiEliminaToday’s lesson made me remembering a Charles Dickens’ novel about industrialization and its effects, I am talking about Coketown in Hard Times published in 1854.
Coketown, expression of the capitalistic system, got unnatural and artificial colours, like the strange red of bricks caused by the smoke and ashes; it is a town with unnatural colours which dominates the description of the city, even river’s water is black. From this water then come a terrible smell caused by industrial discharges.
This idealistic town is full of machinery and noise, mad are the machines, mad is the consequence of industrial revolution.
As we saw in Modern Times, Dickens introduces the idea of alienation: man is identified with the product and even with the machine that the machine causes a lack of identity. Dickens shows how the system determines the life of people and criticizes the alienation caused by mass production: people go out and in at the same hours, they do the same work and for them every day is the same.
We can notice this dehumanization in both stories, Charlot continues to move his hands even during his break, his body is conditioned by the movements he does in the chain assembly, and both authors stressed on the lack of labour rights.
Reading Ross’ article I first appreciate a quotation from Rosenberg, in 1957 he said:
“ mass culture threatens not merely to cretinize our taste, but to brutalize our sense while paving the way to totalitarism”.
Movies and mass media can really manipulate people’s minds, the dehumanization makes people become average, with these two factors we can control everybody, this makes me think about 1984 by George Orwell…
... and about "Brave new world" by Huxely, written in 1932 but really close to us and to Chaplin's description.
RispondiEliminaI agree that this film although on the surface is very funny, underlying it is an emphasis on the hardships of our modern age. Chaplin highlights the faults that come to light at the height of a newly industrial era: one where it would seem the machine has a higher value than human life. I was struck by the first scene where the image of sheep being herded is juxtaposed with factory workers streaming out of work: one mass with no sense of individualism. The treatment of workers within a factory setting is further highlighted in the scene where Chaplin's character is used as a guinea-pig for an experimental feeding machine. Not only is the failure of the device horrifying (violently bashing against Chaplin whilst he is strapped in, in a humiliating manner) but also the idea that the worker should be pushed to these limits of working through a lunch break in the pursuit of economic and industrial growth: this being simply inhumane. Like the sheep first pictured, the life of a worker at the time of the Great Depression in America is degraded to the level of an animal. Yet it is the factory that Chaplin so desperately seeks to be a part of again: with the hope of employment valued above any feelings for human welfare because outside of unemployment, life was far more brutal. It is interesting too that his character seeks to remain in jail, where it offers him a greater quality of life. This reminded me of a parallel in 'The Shawshank Redemption' where the clear systems and structure of life within the jail setting give more comfort to some of the inmates then the outside world. The struggle of trying to find work and fit into society does not give them the freedom they are meant to gain from being 'set free.' I think overall that the film seeks to be a commentary for ‘man vs machine’ and in some ways a framework of American 'anti-progressive' thinking. As Chaplin himself said, “Unemployment is the vital question . . . Machinery should benefit mankind. It should not spell tragedy and throw it out of work.” Human survival within this is just as relevant in 21st century as it was then with the same anxieties of poverty, unemployment and economic inequalities.
RispondiEliminaZoe Braid
Hi!
RispondiEliminaI hadn't seen this movie before, but I really liked it and was surprised about all the thoughts and messages behind it. Although this movie dates from 1936, most of all the main themes are still important in our society. Unemployment, especially now because of the economic crisis, is still a big problem and I think the situation in developing countries is also sometimes comparable to the situation of Chaplin during hard times. In countries like India, Thailand and Bangladesh you can still find the enormous factories with more than thousand employees that runs 24 hours a day. Everything is about time, because time is money and they have to produce as lot as possible....Also the fact that Chaplin wants to go to jail again and again, is not that uncommon today. In the Netherlands there's a big discussion about the good treatment of persons in prison and the fact that some people are better off in jail than on the streets....So in the end, like others also already mentioned, it's a movie of all times that deals with poverty, inequality, unemployment and hunger.
Marieke van der linden
Hi everybody!!
RispondiEliminaI do really agree with Flavia Famà about Chaplin's "Modern Times"..it's really evergreen his rapresentation of unemployement, his way to stress how machines can can lead to human alienation, it's so frustrating observing that from 1936 nothing is changed.
Sometimes we hide ourselves behind some social movements , as CGIL, who born in that period more or less , as Prof. Vano said yesterday, supposing that some of them have really done something for workers.
Just not to be misunderstood, they are actually importan for us ...but in the end I'm asking, why lots of people is still living and working in so terrible conditions??
Everyday we can read on newspapers about whole families without money, or houses , or jobs...they only ask for work, for a human work, for an house to live honestly.
I mean, what's wrong ? What kind of mistakes have we done? Why society is so unkind with people?
Maybe the answer is not so simple and lots of considerations should be done.
However, I'm really glad to have seen this film and I'll try to know better Chaplin,in my opinion a very smart actor, director etc...from other masterpieces of him of course.
Have a nice weekend
Best
Anna Leonetti
Hi everybody! I admit that I had never seen “Modern Times” before last Wednesday and I found it very impressive.
RispondiEliminaThe first thing that I noticed when I was looking at the film was the visionary ability of the author to explain what the labour world was and what the labour world was going to be. I don’t think that in the 30s there were big screens in the factories through which the employer could control his factory workers and I don’t think that in the 30s someone thought that a kind of robot would have fed the same workers to optimize their work. These ones were probably hyperboles of a real tendency of the assembly line organization, but in our era you can see excesses of this type!
Did you notice that nowadays the modern offices are becoming open spaces that include a minimal furniture and big window-walls through wich you can see the workers? I think that this kind of “transparency” permits a closer control of the employer on his employees and this is functional for the general efficiency, but on the other hand I think that it could be also stifling for the humanity of the worker and someone has said that these employees in these depersonalized offices are equal to the series of chickens or pigs in the big farms. So, there aren't so many differences between these animals and the sheeps of the first scene of the film… And what about the lunch time? The paradox is that nowadays the employee doesn’t need a machine that feeds him in order to save time, because the same employee gives up the lunch time in order to work more… because “time is money”, and if he works more he probably will earn more money. I think that nowadays the workers have changed their priorities compared to the ones shown in the film where people worked for hunger and didn’t choose the alienation that was an effect of the time beaten by the assembly line… nowadays instead, some employees look for the happiness in the same career or in the money and in my opinion these ones are alienated inside.
For these reasons I would like to focus my attention on the character of Charlie Chaplin that from my point of view, remains a lord in all his poses since he becomes fool in the factory or makes crimes in order to come back to the jail. Maybe the humanity of Charlie Chaplin doesn’t fit very well with the ideal organization of the work, but I found Charlot’s attitude very dignified.
Finally, I noticed that in “Modern Times” there wasn’t a strict selection for the jobs so that Charlie Chaplin could do different activities… this is not very usual in our system, but the lack of work and the risk of the exploitation of the manpower are themes sadly actual.
All Best,
Valerio
Dear all,
RispondiEliminaI agree with all the opinions expressed in your posts!!
In particular I agree with Flavia Famà's point of view, too.
I think she underlined in a very good way how deep and actual is the link between “Modern Times”, which has been produced in 1936, and the “our times”.
Nowadays, as Flavia Famà correctly wrote, we have to fight against a very difficult period of crisis and recession.
When last week Greece collapsed, all the european countries have been involved in this breakdown: until yesterday evening the agency rating Moody’s assured Italy was one of the European countries to risk an “infection” from Greece.
Today Moody’s , at the beginning of the opening page of its report dedicated to Italy and entitled “La sfida italiana: contenimento del debito con bassa crescita”, which will be soon presented in Milan, retractes clearing up that Italy is not in doubt to be involved in the greek collapse because it hasn’t been in first line during the global financial crisis.
In the exposition of Moody’s theories it’s strange, and in my opinion so funny, but I found this phrase: “Il 2010 in Europa si prospetta difficile, in considerazione della profondità e della natura della crisi. Anche il 2011, il 2012, il 2013 non saranno dei pic-nic”.
In talking about this crisis, which seems to be very similar to Argentina’s one, and obviously to American recession in 1929, I’ve found this metaphor with the food; all the film “Modern Times” is focused on the work and on the unemployment but the question of the food is very important, and central, I think.
“Hunger” is the background of the whole movie and of the whole period of crisis; hunger is able to “move” all characters, to induce them to act in this way (trying to find every kind of job, as Charlie Chaplin does) and to re-act (stealing bananas in the seaport as the girl does, or eating sandwiches and drinking wine in the department store, as the unemployed ex-workers do – remember that when Charlie see them they said they are no thieves, they are only hungry so they are obliged to behave as “thieves”).
During a period of recession, in each time, in the past, but also in the present and in the future, Food and Hunger always become the main characters: when people start to have no money enough ,they decide to “cut” their needs, they deprive themselves, the renounce, they strip themselves from any want, any need, until when comes a day in which the only need remained is food: people have to eat something, they NEED to eat something, and in this sense they everytimes behave in looking for something or someone who help them to EAT, to SATISFY their hunger.
(continua)
I’d like to see the impression which the movie “Modern Times” did upon the first spectators, people who lived during 1929, and who were trying to come out from that terrible time of depression, in all senses.
RispondiEliminaIt’s interesting the role of Cinema and movies in describing this kind of periods: I think “Modern Times” is not only an evergreen but also a great opera destined to be the most important, it is the masterpiece of the movies about crisis!
Thinking about the american political and economical system another film comes in my mind, but it’s quite and completely different from “Modern Times”, not only for the real subject and for the characters but also for the fact it was produced in 1984, not almost immediately as Chaplin did: it is “C’era una volta in America”, by Sergio Leone, which is about the question of the american Protectionism.
Some other movies about the topic of times of crisis and about the difficulties to find a job (to satisfy only the primary needs) in those periods come in my mind: about “our” Italian crisis I have to say that in Italy during these last two years some Italian directors (thinking of “Tutta la vita davanti”, 2008, by Paolo Virzì; “Generazione 1000 euro”, 2009, by Massimo Venier; “Cosa voglio di più”, 2010, by Silvio Soldini,come out last friday),tried to describe in a dramatic but also in a humoristic key this phenomen, but I think they failed, for the fact that these movies are INCOMPARABLE with Modern Times, they are not even funny!
Have a nice weekend!
See you next week!
Flavia Mancini
I think I watched "modern times" about 10 years ago at school. It is surely a masterpiece for the history of Cinema so it is good for our global knowledge and so I was happy for the vision.
RispondiEliminaWatching it from a more mature point of view I could understand better the themes of the movie.
I think there are 3 main points:
1. the industrial revolution (the second). And we can see a very funny Chaplin working as a machine. This could be funny but obviously it means a strong attack to the condition of the work in the industries.
I found terrible, and very actual, when he was smoking a cigarette in the bathroom and the chief (that before was playing with a puzzle) appears from a great screen to reproach him.
2. the crisis of 1929 and the working class political condition.
And it is very actual if we look at our global economy and its crisis.
So the tragic moments of the "battle" between the demonstrators and the Republic (through the Police).
3. the theme of the happiness as the main american right! A family, a house and a minimum of money to live with dignity.
I want say just a last thing.
The economic crisis, as a war, brings much sadness and suffering. Many people, angry and violent, could do terrible things (just seeing the three people killed in Greece in the last days)... but people could also learn to live in a more moral style of life. As Chaplin tried to show...
Our duty, as the generation of the future, is make a world with justice since now... to avoid others economical, political, miltitar crisis!
emanuele vaccaro
I couldn't see the film during class and I could haven't seen it yet, but I found Prof.Vano's lesson quite interesting.I had a look on Chaplin's life and I found a quite interesting thing: I used to call him "Charlot", thinking it came from his real name, Charles. Whereas the character he represented in the most of his screen plays is a "Charlot", that in italian, spanish and french means what english call "the Tramp"(il vagabondo), a dwarf of manners and the dignity of a gentleman. This fact, mixed to others I got during the lesson, reminded me that there were a lot of paradoxes in the epoch he worked and in all of the films he played.Everything is based on paradox: the films, the society.First of all the fact he was accused about his "ambiguous" political choices because of a film he produced, and in fact it was maybe the only one which contained less political references than the others and then there is something I didn't understand properly (it's a paradox too): Chaplin is banned from America because he deals with social problems of the time; such as unemployment; but if common people didn't work, they obviously could not have the money to go out and watch a film at the cinema. So how could Charles Chaplins'works and social protests could influence common sense?
RispondiElimina