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YMMV / Modern Times

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  • Award Snub: The film was ignored at the Academy Awards, yet is now considered one of Charlie Chaplin's best films.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: The scene where The Tramp is arrested after being mistaken for a Communist becomes less humorous when you realize that this was the exact reason for Charlie Chaplin being refused re-entry into the United States in 1952. What's more, the Tramp finding prison more hospitable than the outside world eerily parallels Chaplin's own 20-year refusal to return to the United States, despite being eligible to apply for re-entry.
    Charlie Chaplin: Whether I re-entered that unhappy country or not was of little consequence to me. I would like to have told them that the sooner I was rid of that hate-beleaguered atmosphere the better, that I was fed up of America's insults and moral pomposity…
  • Memetic Mutation: The Tramp as a factory worker tightening an endless lineup of machine parts.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The Tramp's voice towards the ending during his nonsense song.
  • Signature Scene: The Tramp going through the huge gears of the machine.
  • Values Resonance: The film has been praised of being even more relevant today with its satire of industry relations and the unprivileged in modern society.
  • The Woobie:
    • The Tramp, he had to go to prison no less than three times, in the same movie! Plus for the first and third times, he didn't even commit any crimes for prison, and he wasn't trying to cause any trouble either. The poor man can't get a break.
    • The gamin, she can't afford any food and has to steal some for her and her family, who's very poor. She didn't have a mother, her father was unemployed, and her father was eventually shot and died.

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