Set during the Great Depression and regarded as the last great silent film, Modern Times (1936), written, directed and starred by Charles Chaplin, marked the last screen appearance of the Little Tramp, the iconic character which had been universally accepted as the image of its creator. It is a film of social protest, in which the Tramp represents the hardships, acute financial conditions and hunger of all the underprivileged, when mass unemployment coincided with the massive rise of industrial automation. The film also contains a number of memorable inventive scenes that proclaim the frustrating struggle of the working class against the dehumanizing effects of the machine in the Industrial Age. Although it is notable for being the last time that Chaplin portrayed the character on Tramp, it is also the first time, when his voice is heard, singing an imaginary, nonsense song of gibberish.

In the film, the Tramp, a factory worker, working on an assembly line, finds himself unnerved by trying to cope with the modern machinery to tighten bolts on an endless series of machine parts. He has to hold wrenches in both hands to tighten nuts on a long stream of steel plates carried on the conveyor belt production line. He is under undue pressure from the foreman, who always urges him to keep up with the belt and bullies him, even when he pauses for a moment, to itch or makes a gesture to brush away a troublesome fly.

Nevertheless, the result of his compulsory reflexive action also creates disruptive chaos for fellow workers down the production line, which prompts him to frantically rush to catch up and restore order. In addition to all the chaotic problems, he develops a nervous tick due to the continuous stress and the continuity of the same monotonous process for a long time, causing the jerky, rhythmic movements of his nut-tightening, which he cannot stop even in the short break.

After a disastrous mechanical lunch, the Tramp finally becomes crazy under the strain of the job, lies prone on the belt and is dragged, swallowed by the whizzing wheels of the monstrous machine, while his body snakes its way through the gears until the direction of the machine is reversed and he emerges out, free from the grasp of the machine. However, by that time, he has already become a nut and as if in a trance, he starts to dance with his wrenches aloft, demonically tightening everything in sight, including people's noses and chases a woman with the buttons on her bottom through the factory to the outdoors.

There, he eagerly chases a large-breasted woman for tightening the two buttons at the front of her dress, resembling her nipples, and after coming back to the factory, starts to pull all the levers and switches in sight, causing explosions in the equipment and continues his mad ballet with an oil can. After throwing the factory into complete chaos, he was hustled off in a car to a hospital for the treatment of a nervous breakdown.

Following his recovery, the Tramp leaves the hospital to start life anew, wearing his familiar small Derby hat, large boots, baggy pants, tight jacket and a cane, to join a large number of unemployed people, since the factories are closed. However, as he obligingly picks up and waves a red warning flag that has fallen off a passing construction truck, he is mistakenly arrested by the police as one of the demonstrating Communists. In the jail, he unknowingly ingests smuggled cocaine, stored in a salt shaker in the mess hall by a drug addict inmate, and in his subsequent delirium, he avoids being put back in his cell. However, when he returns, he stumbles upon a jailbreak, dodges his gun fire and unwittingly knocks out the escaping convicts unconscious and releases the guards that have been locked in a cell by the convicts.

But when he is informed that he will be released as the award for his heroic actions, he unsuccessfully prays to remain in jail, as he does not have a job. However, despite his insistence, the sheriff grants him freedom with a letter of recommendation, certifying him an honest and trustworthy man.

Soon after his release, the Tramp gets a job in a shipyard on the strength of the sheriff’s recommendation letter. But to follow the instruction of the foreman to find a large wedge, he removes with the help of a sledgehammer the wedge beneath the hull of a ship that is being built in dry-dock, causing it to slide down into the harbour and the consequent sinking of the half-finished ship. Presuming sure retrenchment, the Tramp promptly leaves and tries to get arrested to avoid starvation. Soon after, he runs into an orphaned girl, Ellen, played by Paulette Goddard, trying to flee the police after grabbing a loaf of bread from a baker's van. Determined to go back to jail, the Tramp approaches to the police, declares that he is the thief and asks to be arrested. But his strategy fails, as a female witness testifies to the fact and the police take custody of the girl instead.

Disheartened by his attempt to get arrested, the Tramp becomes more desperate and enters a cafeteria, where he orders a large meal and after enjoying the food, declares at the cash counter that he is unable to pay the bill. This time he becomes successful of being caught and on the way to the lockup, he again meets Ellen in a paddy wagon, employed for the transportation of prisoners. However, when the wagon takes a precarious swerve to avoid an accident, both of them fall out on the road, when she convinces him to escape with her, instead of going to the jail. They both reach the outskirts of the city, sit and flirt on a curb in a residential community and enter into an idealized dream sequence, the dream of a perfect home and their happy life together in it.

Later, the Tramp gets a job as a night watchman at a department store and then sneaks the shivering and cold Ellen into the back entrance of the store. To amuse her, the Tramp performs a risky, blind-folded roller skating act, in the Toy Department on the fourth floor, when he skates circles nearer and nearer to the edge of a balcony with a missing railing. Finally, he takes her to the Bedroom Display on the fifth floor, warms her with a white fur coat and tucks her safely into one of the store's luxurious beds, while promising to wake her up in the morning, before the store opens. After that, while on his rounds, wearing roller skates, the Tramp stumbles into a gang of burglars, led by one of his fellow workers from the factory. He tries to escape, but finds that impossible on a moving escalator. However, the intruders assure him by saying that they were not burglars, but they are hungry and desperate. They indulge themselves in the food department and after sharing drinks with them, the Tramp wakes up the next morning, to be arrested again for failing to call the police and for sleeping in the store’s clothes on a desk.

Ellen greets him with a bright smile, when he is released after ten days and follows her to a dilapidated lakeside shack to live in, which he termed Paradise. They set up a happy home in the ramshackle cabin, despite a beam falls on the Tramp's head when he shuts the door behind him, a table collapses when he leans on it and falls into the lake behind the shack when he leans on the back door. The next morning, he reads about an old factory’s re-opening in the Daily News and lands a job and tries to set the huge machine in motion with others. However, the machine starts malfunctioning, catching his boss in the cogs of the machine. But after lunch, the workers go on strike and the Tramp is pushed around for loitering and accidentally steps onto a board that propels a brick into the head of a policeman, causing him severely beaten and off to jail again.

After his release two weeks later, the Tramp finds a transformed Ellen, who hugs him cheerfully and informs that she is now a café dancer and has also managed a job for him as a singer-cum-waiter. However, in the classic restaurant sequence, he fails miserably as a waiter, but saves the situation and excels during his floor show by improvising the lyrics using gibberish and by pantomiming. Although the owner of the restaurant is pleased to promise him a steady job, his joy dies soon, as the juvenile officials arrive to arrest Ellen for her earlier escape. Nevertheless, the tramp grabs Elle immediately and successfully escapes with her, tossing chairs along the path of their pursuers.

The next day, sitting at the side of a country road at the break of the day, when Elle cries in despair and utters that their struggles are all pointless, the Tramp assures her and shows her how to put a smile on her face. After that, in the most memorable ultimate scene of the film, they are seen optimistically walking down the dusty road arm in arm in the bright dawn, towards an uncertain future with their hearts full of hope.

Initially, Chaplin planned a sadly sentimental ending, with the Tramp in the hospital, recovering from a bout of nervous breakdown and Ellen Paterson parting from him forever to become a nun. Although that ending was filmed, it was finally discarded in favour of a more cheerful finale. It took eight days for filming the roller skating scene in the department store, where Charlie skates blindfolded on the edge of the fourth floor, within inches of falling over the edge into the deep stairwell below. To create the illusion of the dangerous large drop, a painted scene on a pane of glass was carefully placed in front of the camera to align with the existing set. Modern Times was enlisted as one of the first 25 films selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for its cultural, historical and aesthetic significance and was screened out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003.