Charley Chaplin Movie Review essays

Charley Chaplin Movie Review essays The movie is set in the 1930s during the Great Depression era. The film's main concerns are unemployment, poverty, and hunger. Chaplin alternates jobs from an assembly-line factory worker, a shipyard worker, a department store night watchman, an overstressed singing waiter, or an occupant in jail. He is constantly hassled by the 'Big Brother' factory boss, a minister, a sheriff, a shipyard foreman, a department store manager, etc. The film opens with an overhead shot of a flock of sheep shoved in their sheep pen and then the sheep dissolve into a similar overhead shot of industrial workers pushing out of a subway station on their way to work in a factory. Charlie Chaplins character The Tramp is a factory worker whose job it is to tighten bolts on an endless series of machine parts. Under the strain of the job, he finally goes crazy, slowly engulfed by the assembly line. He is hustled off in a car by a white-coated assistant, to be treated in a mental hospital for a nervous breakdo wn. Out on the streets, a young orphaned girl is hungry and wants to help feed her family. Her father is killed and her sisters are now in the hands of social service. She runs off from them and onto the streets of the town. She meets Chaplin and they agree to help each other. They go through many ups and downs with Charlie going to jail several times and not finding a home to live in. They both finally find a job and are successful until the social service men recognize her and try to arrest her. They both escape and walk along a long road to their new life together. The workers are portrayed as being machines. They work non-stop and have to work with the speed of the conveyer belt. They are seen as being substitution for machines. The harder they work, the more products will be made, the more money the company will get. The owner is the man that collects the money from the products that the workers make. He is seen ...