The 1936 Charlie Chaplin film that was his last silent feature, made with synchronized sound effects, was Modern Times.
Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, edited, and starred in the film as the Little Tramp. Its factory sequences satirize industrial regimentation, assembly-line labor, unemployment, and the social pressures of the Great Depression. Paulette Goddard plays the young woman who joins him in trying to survive an unstable modern world.
Modern Times was not completely silent in the technical sense. It uses synchronized music and sound effects, includes recorded voices from machines and authority figures, and features Chaplin briefly singing a deliberately nonsensical version of “Je cherche après Titine.” However, the Little Tramp does not deliver conventional spoken dialogue, and most of the storytelling uses pantomime and intertitles.
Chaplin had begun developing it as a dialogue film but abandoned that approach because he believed the Tramp’s universal appeal depended on remaining largely wordless. The film is therefore often called a silent film, a part-talkie, or Chaplin’s final silent feature. His next film, The Great Dictator, used extensive spoken dialogue.