Robert Birdwell

At the culmination of Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film Modern Times, the Factory Worker (commonly called “the Tramp”) breaks his long silence and sings. The moment is justly famous, as if audiences had been waiting decades to hear the voice of the downtrodden Worker. The Worker, however, does not quite attain to the voice, or the song, that he and his companion, the Gamin, had planned. The Worker has just lost his lyrics, which the Gamin has written on his shirt cuffs. These cuffs fly off his wrists at the start of his dance before the café crowd. “Sing! Nevermind the words,” urges the Gamin in an intertitle. When the Factory Worker does sing, he has lost the proper lyrics and must sing nonsense. His song is one of the few moments of “sound” in this seemingly nostalgic “silent” film. The Worker’s song seems particularly modern, and modernist, in a twofold way: incorporating Chaplin’s voice for the first time and foregrounding the sheer sound of words in verses of bricolage that bring together scraps of various languages. As the Worker is rehearsing, a quartet of “Singing Waiters” appears on the floor and delivers the first song. “We are singing waiters,” they announce, “We will sing and serve potatoes.” The waiters form their quartet, then, and begin singing, while the camera cuts back to the Factory Worker’s rehearsal scene as their lyrics are heard in the background. The Factory Worker begins dancing to his own unheard melody while struggling to memorize his lyrics. What robs the Worker of his words is the song sung in the background. It is called “In the Evening by the Moonlight,” a song about songs, delivered in unison by the waiters: