("MODERN TIMES" AND "THE FLANEUR")

"The ordinary practitioners of the city live "down below" the thresholds at which visibility begins...they are walkers "wandesrmaenner", whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban text."

In "Modern Times" Charlie Chaplins character is the quintessential "walker" .His home is the public places of the city .In this sense he could be easily compared to Walter Benjamins "Flaneur". However his role as a working class laborer, searching for money, food and shelter denies him the freedom of the flaneur and sets him apart from him. The flaneur is essentially a middle class romantic. A person who is enchanted by the teeming crowds of the city, while still possessing the economic privilege to stand outside of it looking in. Chaplins character is a proletarian, a man defined by his labour in much the same way as a machine. He is a commodity. His dual role of Flaneur and proletarian are represented in his directorial choice of images and dialogue as well as the unique physical style of his "little tramp". He walks the streets in search of, not cheap thrills or idle entertainme

"Their brows were knit, and their eyes rolled quickly... Others... were restless in their movements, had flushed faces and talked an gesticulated to themselves...When impeded in their progress, these people suddenly ceased muttering, but redoubled their gesticulations, and awaited with an absent and overdone smile upon their lips, the course of the persons impeding them"

Benjamin points out in his reading of this text that these "walkers" are moving about the city like clowns with a reference to futility and economy to rival Chaplins own clockwork-like affectations. In fact Benjamins description of this type of clown echoes Chaplins style with eerie accuracy. "With his abrupt movements he imitates both the machines which push the material and the economic boom which pushes the merchandise."

nt, like the typical flaneur. Instead he seeks a job that will give definition to his rootless existence.

A role that the Factory Worker seems to take on most consistently, one that perfectly illustrates his working class identity, is that of the machine. In the first scene he is tightening bolts on a production line. He has been doing this for so long that even when it comes time for him to break for lunch he has taken on the twitching rhythms of his machine. In fact throughout the entire film Chaplins character, with his rhythmic waddling walk and facial tics, resembles not only the rhythm of the machines he slaves over but also the regimented rhythmic ebbs and flows of the crowd and the city itself. In the opening shots of the film images of sheep moving blindly through a paddock are juxtaposed with images of businessmen rushing on their way to work. Later when Factory Worker takes on a job as a waiter in a restaurant he is jostled and moved about in an endless circle by a crowd of dancing patrons. This scene is extremely frustrating as we watch the tightly packed faceless mass move Chaplin about in such a way that they seem to become more like an organism with a life of its own than a group of individuals. Moments like these provoke comparison with "The Man In The Crowd", Edgar Alan Poes famous tale of a detective following the trail of an unknown Flaneur through the streets of London. In this story Poe accentuates the dreary isolation of the city dwellers by exaggeratin

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Approximate Word count = 1552
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)