There are people who look back at the "golden age" of Hollywood with a certain air of condescension.

Charlie Chaplin and his onetime Mack Sennett colleague Chester Conklin in a memorable scene from Modern Times

Yes, those movies were fun, they'll say, but they didn't aspire to do anything more than entertain.  Having suffered through years of big-budget junk from today's Hollywood, I've come to appreciate older movies more than ever.  I've also come to the realization that what they achieved was something real and substantial that belies their reputation as escapist fluff. 

I've had two forceful reminders of this during the past few weeks; one of the movies in question is a bona fide classic, but the other is unheralded.  As part of the Toronto International Film Festival, I was asked to introduce a picture that influenced me, and I chose Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936).  This was the first silent feature-film I ever saw, in its 1959 reissue, and it made a tremendous impression on me.  I fell in love with it all over again while watching it with an enthusiastic audience in Toronto. 

Chaplin was of course the consummate comedy performer, and while his reputation as a filmmaker is somewhat less exalted, you can't help but notice in a film like Modern Times that the camera is always exactly where it ought to be...that shots never start too late or finish too soon.  The mechanics of film were a tool to Chaplin, a means to an end, and that end was making every scene count, and every gag work.

Charlie Chaplin with his wife and leading lady Paulette Goddard on the lawn of their home

Anyone who has seen Kevin Brownlow and David Gill's remarkable documentary Unknown Chaplin knows first-hand how hard Chaplin worked on his films.  Days, even months might be spent perfecting one single moment; no effort was too great.  Yet no effort is revealed in the finished product.  Modern Times, like all his best films, flows gracefully and seamlessly from one vignette to the next, with unforgettable moments like Charlie on the assembly line, or testing out the futuristic feeding machine.  The film also serves as a showcase for  beautiful Paulette Goddard, "The Gamin," whose spirited performance brightens every scene she's in. 

When, at the end of the film, he tells her to "Buck up—we'll get along!", and they walk away from the camera, arm in arm, it's a moment of pure joy.  While Charlie has satirized the mechanization—and dehumanization—of modern society, and the plight of the jobless, throughout the film, he ends on a note of irresistible optimism.  What a wonderful movie.

Last week, my wife and I were delighted to attend the wedding of Dennis Bartok and Susan Gold at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.  Dennis is the inexhaustible programmer for the American Cinematheque, and the Los Angeles movie lover's best friend.  Eddie Muller, author of Dark City Dames and guest programmer for the Cinematheque's annual film noir series, is also an ordained minister, and he performed the ceremony before scores of family members and friends (including a number of filmmakers whom Dennis has saluted, and befriended, at the theater). 

After the reception, Dennis and Susan presented their favorite movie, The Happy Time (1952), in a 35mm print provided by Michael Schlesinger of Sony Pictures' Repertory Division.  In attendance were the film's costar Marsha Hunt and its director, Richard Fleischer.

Kurt Kasznar, Charles Boyer, Bobby Driscoll, Marsha Hunt, and Louis Jourdan in The Happy Time

I hadn't seen The Happy Time since I was a child, and I have to admit that my memory of it was dim at best. (That's why it doesn't get the review it deserves in the current edition of my Movie & Video Guide.  That situation will be remedied next year!)  After it was over I saw why Susan and Dennis wanted to share it with their guests:  it's a beautifully realized story of love, family, and coming of age.  Charles Boyer plays the head of a boisterous household in Ottawa during the 1920s.  One of his brothers (Kurt Kasznar) lives just across the street with his shrewish wife, never lifting a finger except to hoist his ever-present jug of wine; the other (Louis Jourdan) is a traveling salesman who delights in his female conquests—and his collection of garters from dancers at the burlesque theater.  Boyer's lively son, Bobby Driscoll, is on the verge of puberty, unaware that the girl next door has a crush on him, uncertain about his feelings toward a beautiful magician's assistant (Linda Christian) who comes to stay with the family. 

The cast couldn't be better.  Boyer has the lightest touch imaginable, with Marsha Hunt hitting just the right note as his patient and loving wife.  Marcel Dalio is amusing as Boyer's roguish father, and Richard Erdman makes the most of a small but gem-like comedy role as an uptight banker who asks for Kasznar's daughter's hand, but drinks too much of the father's wine.   

With a screenplay by Earl Felton based on the play by Samuel A. Taylor (adapted, in turn, from Robert Fontaine's novel), The Happy Time deals with a range of emotions in a warm and witty way.  Its treatment of sexual urges, in the young and young at heart, is so deft that it outwits the puritanical censorship of the 1950s. The film cannot completely disguise its stage origins, but the performances are so fresh, and the feeling of ensemble so strong, that it simply doesn't matter.  At the end of the movie, Boyer embraces his growing son and we see the glint of a tear in his eye.  I had the exact same response.

In the lobby, I told Richard Fleischer, "You made me cry!" and he replied, "It made me cry, too!" 

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Movies today are so bathed in cynicism and hampered by emotional detachment that a film like The Happy Time might seem strange, even foreign, to a modern audience.  

But maybe not.  I think some Hollywood executives sell their audience short; they seem to think that moviegoers are as shallow as they are.  It's my belief that audiences want to feel real emotions;they've just learned to settle for less, because that's what Hollywood gives them.

Which brings me back to my original point.  Moviemakers who plied their trade during that aptly-titled golden age knew how to entertain—how to reach an audience at the most direct level of communication.  Some of them could move us to tears... and others could leave us feeling ten feet tall, as if we were walking on a cloud. 

  To lift one's spirits is no small matter.  Indeed, I believe it is one of the finest things any work of art can achieve. 

Charlie Chaplin was a genius; we're lucky if someone that gifted comes along even once in a generation.  His work will never die.  But I  wish The Happy Time were available on video, to use as a tutorial for young filmmakers, and give them something to shoot for.  Movies need a large dose of humanity if they are ever going to affect us the way the films of the 1930s, 40s, and early 50s did.