Film Forum

(1936) The Tramp gets trapped in the coils of automation, so frenziedly tightening screws on the assembly line that he compulsively adjusts the buttons on women’s dresses; plays the guinea pig for a feeding machine gone amok; helpfully waves a red flag dropped by a departing truck – just as a Communist demonstration marches up behind him; and gets thrown in the slammer, where he accidentally sniffs a fellow con’s “happy dust.” A corrosive satire on the dehumanizing effects of technology, but also one of his most lighthearted works, with the additional exuberance of Paulette Goddard as “the Gamin.” Approx. 87 min. 35mm.