Just saw this movie and God is it good. I'm going to be seeing a lot more Chaplain.
However, was he taking Coke, when he was eating the 'nose powder.' and that's what got him all hyper and was dodging bullets and beating up three crooks came from the power of coccaine?
If so this is an edgey movie, or maybe they didn't take drugs as seriously as today.
That's certainly the impression I got, I was actually quite surprised! That's what's so great about revisiting old movies and books and things, you find the odd reference to something a little more ominous or edgy than you would expect. I don't know if the drug reference meant the same to Chaplin's audience as it does to us, I think by then cocaine was illegal, but I wouldn't stake my reputation on it.
Lemon curry?!
c.f. Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" from roughly the same period (1935) and its many references to "happy dust."
shareWhich is exactly why the prisoner disposed of it before the guards came to question him and put it with the salt and the character of Chaplin took it not knowing what it was.
shareMy cinema teacher explained that this movie was "pre-code", so most drug references would have been okay. Under the code, drug references were pretty much taboo, so they didn't appear again in mainstream films until decades later.
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Another reference to cocaine is the Cole Porter song "I Get a Kick Out of You." Something about how the character doesnt get a kick from cocaine because it doesnt thrill at all..."but I get a kick out of you." Try making a song like that these days and you'll be run off Broadway.
Monsters...monsters from the ID!!!
The Hays (MPAA) code began full enforcement in 1934. Modern Times was released in 1936. Your cinema teacher should go back to school; if not for cinema then for simple math. Even more obvious is that the film is plastered with an MPAA certificate (certificate no. 1506, actually). So if you actually watched this in a class, everyone should have seen the MPAA certificate at the start of the film.
shareYeah, it was pretty edgy. They had just put in the Production Code a few years earlier, which is why he couldn't come right out and call it cocaine in the movie. But there were drugs in prison, and Chaplin thought it would be funny.
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