Modern Times (1936)
I got interested in watching this film after reading the first chapter of Jenny Odell's Saving Time, which talks about how much we've lost in the pursuit of maximum efficiency for our bosses. Odell mentions Modern Times as an illustration of her point, so it was nice to see the movie to understand how great of an illustration it is.
For an old black-and-white film without much talking, it's surprisingly watchable. It certainly helps that The Tramp's struggles are still very relatable to today's working-class audience.
There was even a scene that made me laugh out loud! When the main couple moves into a ramshackle old house, there was a lot of physical comedy involving the house falling apart around them. At one point, I thought the scene was over, until The Tramp leans against a wall which falls outward, as the camera cuts to an outside view which shows Charlie Chaplin rolling backwards into a swamp. The unexpectedness of it and the over-the-top reaction got to me somehow, then I kept laughing afterward at the idea of finding it so funny in the first place.
My one gripe (well aside from the casual sexism) is that there were a few too many scenes of The Tramp getting extraordinarily lucky, often at the expense of other people, like getting the factory job over thousands of other workers, stopping a jail break, and avoiding blame for making someone drop a bunch of dishes in the restaurant scene. On its face, I think these are great depictions of the zero-sum game we are forced to play, where any time we get ahead in life often comes at the expense of others. However, the film seemed to play these scenes off as jokes rather than seriously examining them.
Today, I feel like a lot of tech workers have bumbled their way into success at the expense of others in the same way The Tramp did (myself included). But due to cognitive biases, we begin to think we deserve the success we have and can't imagine it being taken away. With a cooling labor market, stagnant wages, and a tech bubble on the verge of bursting, a series of tragicomic events like the Tramp experiences could be in our own futures as well.