This evening I was lucky enough to catch a screening of Charlie Chaplin's immortal satire Modern Times at London's Royal Festival Hall featuring live accompaniment by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Carl Davis. The film was showing as part of the 'America 1900-1950' strand of the Southbank Centre's monumentally ambitious year-long festival of programmes addressing the evolution of 20th century classical music, The Rest Is Noise, inspired by critic Alex Ross's 2007 book of the same name. Chaplin famously composed his own scores, although he had a little help this time from Alfred Newman and a young David Raksin (best known for his theme to Otto Preminger's Laura, 1944). His original music for Modern Times, which included the hit song 'Smile', has recently been restored and revised by Timothy Brock and it was this version that so delighted the audience tonight.
I'd forgotten quite how packed Modern Times is with event and invention, from Charlie's mad rampage around the Electro Steel Corp. factory frantically tightening the buttons, nipples and noses of his colleagues to his accidental arrest as a union agitator and the extraordinary scene at the jailhouse in which he liberally peppers his lunch with cocaine by mistake, a scene that makes inspired use of the comedian's expressive features. His romance with Paulette Goddard's barefoot wharf rat is as lovely as I'd remembered and the scenes in which he fantasises about their setting up house together and entertains her by roller skating blindfolded around a department store at night are hard to beat for sheer romantic enchantment. This latter interlude actually got the biggest reaction out of the Festival Hall audience tonight - a collective intake of breath as Charlie skates perilously close to a ledge several times without even knowing it. A staggering feat of bravery from an auteur truly committed to his art.

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