Quote:
I don’t have much patience with colleagues who dismiss Charlie Chaplin by saying that Buster Keaton was better (whatever that means). To the best of my knowledge, with the arguable exception of Dickens, no one else in the history of art has shown us in greater detail what it means to be poor, and certainly no one else in the history of movies has played to a more diverse audience or evolved more ambitiously from one feature to the next. The opening sequence in Chaplin’s second Depression masterpiece (1936), of the Tramp on the assembly line, is possibly his greatest slapstick encounter with the 20th century, and as Belgian filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have brilliantly observed, the famous shot of his being run through machinery equates him with a strip of film. Still, there’s more hope here than in Chaplin’s preceding City Lights, perhaps because this time the Tramp has Paulette Goddard, another plucky urchin, to keep him company.

Quote:
Heralding the Return, After an Undue Absence, of Charlie Chaplin in ‘Modern Times.’
The hands of the cinema clock were set back five years last night when a funny little man with a microscopic mustache, a battered derby hat, turned up shoes and a flexible bamboo cane returned to the Broadway screen to resume his place in the affections of the film-going public. The little man—it scarcely needs be said—is Charlie Chaplin, whose “Modern Times,” opening at the Rivoli, restores him to a following that has waited patiently, burning incense in his temple of comedy, during the long years since his last picture was produced.

That was five years ago almost to the day. “City Lights” was its name and in it Mr. Chaplin refused to talk. He still refuses. But in “Modern Times” he has raised the ban against dialogue for other members of the cast, raised it, but not completely. A few sentences here and there, excused because they come by television, phonograph, the radio. And once—just once—Mr. Chaplin permits himself to be heard, singing some jabberwocky of his own to the tune of a Spanish fandango.

Those are the answers to the practical questions. They do not tell of Mr. Chaplin’s picture, or of Chaplin himself, or of the comic feast that he has been preparing for almost two years in the guarded cloister in Hollywood known as the Chaplin studio.

But there is no cause for alarm and no reason to delay the verdict further: “Modern Times” has still the same old Charlie, the lovable little fellow whose hands and feet and prankish eyebrows can beat an irresistible tattoo upon an audience’s funnybone or hold it still, taut beneath the spell of human tragedy. A flick of his cane, a quirk of a brow, an impish lift of his toe and the mood is off; a droop of his mouth, a sag of his shoulder, a quick blink of his eye and you are his again, a companion in suffering. Or do you have to be reminded that Chaplin is a master of pantomime? Time has not changed his genius.

Speak then, of the picture, and of its story. Rumor said that “Modern Times” was preoccupied with social themes, that Chaplin—being something of a liberal himself—had decided to dramatize the class struggle, that no less an authority than Shumiatsky, head of the Soviet film industry, had counseled him about the ending and that Chaplin, accepting that advice, had made significant changes.

Mr. Chaplin’s foreword to his picture was dangerously meaningful. “‘Modern Times,'” it reads, “is a story of industry, of individual enterprise—humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.” Verily, a strange prelude to an antic.

Happily for comedy, Mr. Chaplin’s description is only part of the truth and we suspect he meant it to be that way. Hollywood has quoted him as saying, “There are those who always attach social significance to my work. It has none. I leave such subjects to the lecture platform. To entertain is my first consideration.”

We should prefer to describe “Modern Times” as the story of the little clown, temporarily caught up in the cogs of an industry geared to mass production, spun through a three-ring circus and out into a world as remote from industrial and class problems as a comedy can make it.

It finds Charlie as a worker on an assembly line in a huge factory. A sneeze or a momentary raise of his head is all that is needed to disrupt the steady processional of tiny gadgets whose nuts he must tighten with one swooping twist. At lunch hour his boss places him in an experimental automatic feeding machine. Like Charlie, the device goes berserk. Bowls of soup are tossed in his face, a corn-on-the-cob self-feeder throws moderation to the winds and kernels to the floor. The machine alternately grinds corn into his face and wipes his mouth with a solicitous, but entirely ineffectual, self-wiper. Charlie recovers in a hospital. When he returns, discharged as cured, he runs into the unemployment problem.

So much for the industrial crisis. Finished with it for the time, the picture involves its hero in a radical demonstration, a prison riot, several police patrol wagons, a gamin (Paulette Goddard, his new leading lady), who is homeless and helpless as he; a job as night watchman in a department store, more trouble with the law, a new job as a singing waiter in a restaurant and still more trouble with the law. There is, for good measure, a return to the factory, but no longer as a piece of human machinery on the assembly line.

Sociological concept? Maybe. But a rousing, rib-tickling, gag-be-strewn jest for all that and in the best Chaplin manner. If you remember his two-reeler, “The Skating Rink,” you will be pleased to hear that Mr. Chaplin has not forgotten it either, and has found a place somewhere in his story for a more modern companion piece. You have seen him as a waiter years before, and you should be delighted to learn that he has not forgotten his tray-juggling technique. You should know, of old, his facility for dodging the Keystone cops and he clatters away just as nimbly now even though his pursuers wear more modern uniforms.

So it goes, and mighty pleasantly, too, with Charlie keeping faith with his old public by bringing back the tricks he used so well when the cinema was very young, and by extending his following among the moderns by employing devices new to the clown dynasty. If you need more encouragement than this, be informed then that Miss Goddard is a winsome waif and a fitting recipient of the great Chariot’s championship, and that there are in the cast several players who have adorned the Chaplin films since first the little fellow kicked up his heels and scampered into our hearts. This morning there is good news: Chaplin is back again.

Also at the Rivoli, and deserving of mention even on a bill that presents Mr. Chaplin, is Walt Disney’s latest cartoon, “Mickey’s Polo Team.” Certainly the rowdiest of all the Disneys, it contains a wild and woolly polo match between a team comprised of Mickey, Donald Duck, the Goof and the Big Bad Wolf and another four representing Harpo Marx, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy and Mr. Chaplin. Jack Holt is referee.
Frank S. Nugent, NY Times, February 6, 1936

Modern Times BDrip.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 27mn
Size: 	1.44 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	792x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.375
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 000 Kbps
BPP: 	0.183
Audio
#1:  	English 1.0ch AC-3 @ 192 Kbps
#2:  	English 1.0ch AC-3 @ 160 Kbps (Commentary)

https://nitro.download/view/DD7565E53492D05/Modern_Times_BDrip.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/59F1FF322794136/Modern_Time_extras.rar

Language(s):Mostly Silent, Dual audio with Commentary
Subtitles:English Intertitles, optional German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Turkish, Hebrew, Russian, English and German HOH

The post Charles Chaplin – Modern Times (1936) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

IMDb wrote:
France, 1885. Celestine, a Parisian girl arrives in the rural Lanlaire mansion to work as the chambermaid. Barely alighting from the train, Celestine has already been rebuffed by the haughty valet Joseph (an excellently surly Lederer), and confides to the also newly arrived scullery maid Louise (a mousy and dowdy Irene Ryan) that she will do whatever in her power to advancing her social position and firmly proclaims that love is absolutely off limits, and the film uses the literal diary- writing sequences as a recurrent motif to trace Celestine’s inner thoughts.

The Diary of a Chambermaid - Jean Renoir (1946).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 27 min
Size: 	2.09 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	790x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.372
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 106 kb/s
BPP: 	0.285
Audio
#1:  	1.0ch AC-3 @ 320 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/0958FEDE929ACCE/The_Diary_of_a_Chambermaid_-_Jean_Renoir_(1946).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Jean Renoir – The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
This superior melodrama with a darkly comic tinge came out at a time when Mitchell Leisen’s career was running hot after a series of successes including films like Easy Living, Midnight, and Remember the Night. It was also the last film Billy Wilder (in partnership with Charles Brackett) was content with just writing the screenplay for. He was supposedly so annoyed by the way Leisen took liberties with his script that he resolved never to cede directorial control again.

Despite Wilder’s dissatisfaction, Leisen did a fine job with a theme that resonates just as strongly for viewers in today’s world. In a post-modern touch, the film opens with George Iscovescu (Charles Boyer) desperately trying to sell his story to a Paramount director played by Leisen himself in an effort to earn money quickly.

In the form of a long flashback, George is revealed as a gigolo originally from Romania who has fled Nazi-occupied Europe and arrived at a dusty Mexican border town aiming to enter the United States. Immigration officials there advise him that the quota for Romanians is full and he’s looking at a wait of up to eight years before he can get a visa.

After six months holed up at the border he’s broke and in despair when he bumps into Anita (Paulette Goddard), an old flame and fellow operator from Europe. She tells George how she found a loophole in the immigration system by marrying a gullible American, gaining entry to the States, and then divorcing the husband.

George resolves to try the same scheme, and after one failed attempt, finds the perfect target in Emmy Brown (Olivia de Havilland), a naive teacher in Mexico for a day trip with her class whose bus has been in a minor accident and is being repaired.

After forcing a convenient delay in the repairs by making a part go missing, George turns all his charms on Emmy, sweeps her off her feet, and within 24 hours succeeds in marrying her.

Emmy has to return to her school, and George is happy to wait at the border until his immigration is approved, at which time he plans to dump her. Anita for her part intends to team up with George again once he’s inside the U.S.

But after a few days Emmy returns unexpectedly, and when an immigration inspector on the hunt for fraudulent visa applicants also appears, George takes her off on a road trip through Mexico. In the course of their journey together, he finds himself falling in love with her. The marriage of convenience has turned into a true romance.

This development incenses the jealous Anita. She proceeds to fill Emmy in on her husband’s less-than-pristine past and his original scheme for her. But Emmy’s reaction takes everyone by surprise…

2.87GB | 1 h 55 min | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/9C53725B6E97BA2/Mitchell_Leisen_-_(1941)_Hold_Back_the_Dawn.mkv

Language(s):English+commentary
Subtitles:English

The post Mitchell Leisen – Hold Back the Dawn (1941) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Review Summary
A post-WWII romantic comedy that explores the effects of the war on American marriage, this film stars Fred MacMurray and Paulette Goddard as Peter and Mary Morley, a pair of constantly fighting attorneys. They are on the verge of breaking up their marriage when the war breaks out. Mary goes into the Women’s Army Corps, and when she returns after the war, she’s no longer sure if she wants a divorce. In her absence, however, Peter has hooked up with Gloria Fay (Arleen Whelan), who demands that he sign the divorce papers. In turn, Jack Lindsay (MacDonald Carey, one of Peter’s clients, has fallen for Mary, but he doesn’t want to move in with her until the divorce is official. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

789MB | 1:27:30 | 640 x 480 | avi

http://nitroflare.com/view/8398A0861423A46/Suddenly%2C_it%C2%B4s_spring_-1947_Mitchell_Leisen-_%28Paulette_Goddard%2C_Fred_MacMurray%2C_Macdonald_Carey%29.english.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Mitchell Leisen – Suddenly, It’s Spring (1947) first appeared on Cinema of the World.