Of course, this need not happen, Chaplin figured in the early days of sound, were the new medium only to become one way of making films.
Silent comedy is more satisfactory entertainment for the masses than sound comedy .
It was Chaplin against a world which he viewed increasingly as being made up of novelty-oriented robots. The film's workers are likened to sheep in the opening shot, and in one of the most famous sequences, Charlie himself is caught in the cogs of a vicious machine and, later, feeds a meal to a poor devil caught, perhaps forever, deep in the bowels of another metal monster. When brought in for Charlie's slave-driving boss to inspect in the film's opening minutes, a machine meant to feed workers while leaving their hands free announces its functions by an associated LP record. The device's viciously mechanical, repetitive quality, and its urge to present itself as superior, are emphasized by how the recording points out no less than three times that the lunch hour can now be eliminated from the workday. The answer, or the means to the answer, can be found in Roland Barthes' analysis of wine.