WHETHER YOU CONSIDER him a second-place silent comedian marinated in sentimentality or film's first bona fide Renaissance man, it's indisputable that cinema would be a substantially different medium had Charlie Chaplin never stepped in front of or behind a camera. His contribution to the art, besides the globally recognizable iconography of his supertramp alter ego, is the refinement of what writer-comedian Paul Merton dubbed "the comedy of the soul": the ability to simultaneously produce laughter and a lump in the throat. Stuck between the virtuoso sap-stick of his earlier work and the bitterness of his later films lies Modern Times, a satirical ode to the mechanical age that seems both timeless and strangely timely – substitute Pentium chips for those whirling cogs, and the film could have been made yesterday. The mostly silent swan song of the tramp persona is the high and low Chaplin at his purest, complete with pandering moments of his patented pathos via the wild-eyed feral waif (Paulette Goddard) he befriends and several vignettes – roller-skating on a precarious edge, the "nose powder" (ahem)-fueled prison meal, his spectacular dive into six inches of water – that are models of physical comedy grace. But it's the first half hour that is arguably the filmmaker's finest moment, where the automatons of Metropolis and photographer Lewis Hines's steamfitters ply their trade in a factory apparently pumped with nitrous oxide. Starting with a shot of penned sheep fading into the morning shift (liberally borrowed from Rene Clair's A nous la liberté), escalating with our hero literally caught in the wheels of industry, and climaxing with a nervous breakdown, the is the perfect summation and send-up of the assembly line blues, proving that Chaplin's mastery of craft more than makes up for the continually runneth-over of his cup. Modern Times, originally released in 1936, hits the Castro Theatre in high-definition, digitally restored print form. See Rep Clock for show times. (David Fear)