What happens if it actually works?

[prog]

I saw the Charlie Chaplain classic Modern Times last night. It's great, though perhaps better with the right crowd (which I had). As happens sometimes with very old movies, surprise at some of the content that doesn't mesh with today's uninformed notions of what 1930s cinema might have been like. A bizarre scene where Chaplain gets coked up (actually), dodges bullets Matrix-style and then beats up some guys. Nipple jokes in the opening scenes, and later on entirely self-contained scene of fart jokes. (Actually internal-gut-noise jokes, which made it even stranger.)

A subtler thing: the female lead seemed surprisingly attractive by modern standards of objective (Hollywood) beauty, which I know were different back then. I wonder why this was... she was supposed to be a wily wharf-rat girl, and perhaps they cast someone leaner-looking than the norm? Then again, she was also made up to look scruffy and disheveled for most of the picture, and I no doubt found her cuter for it.

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Also got my Primer DVD today. daerr has already spoiled it for me by relating a review he heard about the commentary track utterly failing to unwind the plot. Dammit!

Comments

[ex-colorwhe.livejournal.com]

how do you like her here? (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002104/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnxteD0yMHxsbT01MDB8ZmI9dXxwbj0wfHE9Z29kZGFyZCBwYXVsZXR0ZXxodG1sPTF8bm09b24_;fc=1;ft=20)

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

I remember a couple of those scenes. Tea drinking.