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Dec 20, 2015Nursebob rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Presented in the silent film style using intertitles and only a few incidental sounds and mechanical voices, Charlie Chaplin’s comedy of manners for an industrial age is still relevant (and just as funny) eighty years later. Famous for its whimsically elaborate sets and physical comedy—including a now iconic image of Chaplin literally caught in the gears of an enormous engine—there is a gravity beneath the slapstick as issues of poverty, injustice, and the dehumanizing side of technology work their way in between the laughs. But it was a subtle scene of implied homosexuality plus a “gurgling stomach” passage that gave the Hays office nightmares. I guess they missed the part where he accidentally goes off on a hilarious cocaine binge! Classic cinema.