Pay Day is a realistic little film – a slice of the life of a building laborer before, on, and after pay day. This film, too, was probably influenced by Clare Sheridan and other social-minded friends. […] Technically, Pay Day is a noticeable advance.

For the first time in a Chaplin film backlighting is used in the interiors. Night scenes, such as the rain and trolley-car sequences, were photographed at night with the aid of rather skillful artificial lighting. The sets are designed with an almost stylized simplicity. Some of the key action turns, as with the escalator in The Floorwalker and the recalcitrant Ford in A Day’s Pleasure, on the workings of a blind mechanical force, in this case an unpredictable elevator and inaccessible street cars. Much of the action gains point as illustrations of life’s little ironies. The accent is on comedy but frustrations are the normal course as the tough foreman and his haughty daughter, the workman’s own menacing wife, and even the elusive street cars keep him from fulfillments, great and small.

Theodore Huff, Charlie Chaplin, New York 1951