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Charlie Chaplin,
Charlie Chaplin,
Georgia Hale,
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Charlie Chaplin,
Charlie Chaplin
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: Not Rated
: Warner Home Video, Warner Home Video/MK2 ?ditions
: Classics, Comedies, Classic Comedy, Slapstick, Classic Comedy, Silent, Silent Comedies, Silent Comedy
: English, French
: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Korean, Thai
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The Gold Rush (Chaplin Collection) (1925)
He may be called "The Lone Prospector" in The Gold Rush, but the character played by Charlie Chaplin is the same wistful, resourceful Little Tramp that had been entertaining the world and its brother since 1914. A most unlikely participant in the 1898 Yukon gold rush, Charlie finds himself sharing a remote cabin with two much larger and more menacing-looking prospectors: Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain) and Black Larsen (Tom Murray). Big Jim isn't really a bad sort, but Larsen is a murderer and thief. When the food supply runs out, Larsen heads out in the snowy wastes to hunt, leaving Charlie to prepare a delicious Thanksgiving dinner for Big Jim, consisting of roasted shoe. The days pass: in a delirium, Big Jim imagines that Charlie is a huge chicken, and voraciously takes after him with an axe; Charlie saves himself by inadvertently shooting a bear, thereby providing enough food for ten men (Chaplin's inspiration for this episode was the cannibalistic activities of the Donner Party). When the winds subside, Charlie and Big Jim part company. Charlie heads off to seek his fortune in a nearby gold-rush community, while Big Jim lucks upon a "mountain of gold" -- just before he is ambushed and knocked unconscious by Black Larsen. Larsen himself is then killed by an avalanche, leaving Big Jim to wander aimlessly, his memory gone. Meanwhile, Charlie has fallen in love, from afar, with self-reliant saloon girl Georgia (Georgia Hale) who doesn't know that he exists. By a fluke, Charlie and Georgia meet, whereupon Charlie invites the girl to New Year's Eve dinner in the cabin that he is tending for a local prospector. While preparing for dinner, Charlie imagines that Georgia has arrived with her friends; he entertains the girls by jabbing two forks in two rolls, then performing a captivating little "dance" with the pastries. Awakening from his dream, Charlie disconsolately realizes that Georgia has forgotten all about his little party, and isn't going to show up. The next day, Big Jim arrives in town and is shaken out of his amnesia when he spots Charlie. Hoping that the little prospector will help him find his mountain of gold, Big Jim heads back to the mountains with Charlie in tow. The two men nearly come to grief when their cabin, blown by the wind to a mountain precipice, leans precariously over the edge--a peril intensified when Charlie, clinging to the floor, develops a sudden case of hiccups! Luck of luck, the cabin slides safely down the side of the mountain, landing directly upon Big Jim's gold strike. Now fabulously wealthy, Charlie and Big Jim head back to the States on a freighter. Also on board is Georgia, who is unaware that Charlie has struck it rich and thinks that he's a stowaway. She offers to hide him from the authorities, and it is at this point that Charlie and Georgia discover that they're truly in love with one another. The Gold Rush was the longest (it ran nine reels, cut down from its ten-reel preview length) and most elaborately produced of Chaplin's silent comedies (it took him fourteen months to complete). Even so, critics of the era chastised Chaplin for permitting the Little Tramp to win the girl at the end, arguing that the character's "integrity" was damaged by so happy an ending. Evidently, Chaplin took this criticism to heart: in his 1942 reissue of The Gold Rush, for which he wrote a narration and musical score, Chaplin removed the final embrace between the Lone Prospector and Georgia, fading out on a wealthy -- but still unattached -- Charlie strolling about the deck. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
The Gold Rush (Chaplin Collection: Revised Version) (1942)
He may be called "The Lone Prospector" in The Gold Rush, but the character played by Charlie Chaplin is the same wistful, resourceful Little Tramp that had been entertaining the world and its brother since 1914. A most unlikely participant in the 1898 Yukon gold rush, Charlie finds himself sharing a remote cabin with two much larger and more menacing-looking prospectors: Big Jim McClain (Mack Swain) and Black Larsen (Tom Murray). Big Jim isn't really a bad sort, but Larsen is a murderer and thief. When the food supply runs out, Larsen heads out in the snowy wastes to hunt, leaving Charlie to prepare a delicious Thanksgiving dinner for Big Jim, consisting of roasted shoe. The days pass: in a delirium, Big Jim imagines that Charlie is a huge chicken, and voraciously takes after him with an axe; Charlie saves himself by inadvertently shooting a bear, thereby providing enough food for ten men (Chaplin's inspiration for this episode was the cannibalistic activities of the Donner Party). When the winds subside, Charlie and Big Jim part company. Charlie heads off to seek his fortune in a nearby gold-rush community, while Big Jim lucks upon a "mountain of gold" -- just before he is ambushed and knocked unconscious by Black Larsen. Larsen himself is then killed by an avalanche, leaving Big Jim to wander aimlessly, his memory gone. Meanwhile, Charlie has fallen in love, from afar, with self-reliant saloon girl Georgia (Georgia Hale) who doesn't know that he exists. By a fluke, Charlie and Georgia meet, whereupon Charlie invites the girl to New Year's Eve dinner in the cabin that he is tending for a local prospector. While preparing for dinner, Charlie imagines that Georgia has arrived with her friends; he entertains the girls by jabbing two forks in two rolls, then performing a captivating little "dance" with the pastries. Awakening from his dream, Charlie disconsolately realizes that Georgia has forgotten all about his little party, and isn't going to show up. The next day, Big Jim arrives in town and is shaken out of his amnesia when he spots Charlie. Hoping that the little prospector will help him find his mountain of gold, Big Jim heads back to the mountains with Charlie in tow. The two men nearly come to grief when their cabin, blown by the wind to a mountain precipice, leans precariously over the edge--a peril intensified when Charlie, clinging to the floor, develops a sudden case of hiccups! Luck of luck, the cabin slides safely down the side of the mountain, landing directly upon Big Jim's gold strike. Now fabulously wealthy, Charlie and Big Jim head back to the States on a freighter. Also on board is Georgia, who is unaware that Charlie has struck it rich and thinks that he's a stowaway. She offers to hide him from the authorities, and it is at this point that Charlie and Georgia discover that they're truly in love with one another. The Gold Rush was the longest (it ran nine reels, cut down from its ten-reel preview length) and most elaborately produced of Chaplin's silent comedies (it took him fourteen months to complete). Even so, critics of the era chastised Chaplin for permitting the Little Tramp to win the girl at the end, arguing that the character's "integrity" was damaged by so happy an ending. Evidently, Chaplin took this criticism to heart: in his 1942 reissue of The Gold Rush, for which he wrote a narration and musical score, Chaplin removed the final embrace between the Lone Prospector and Georgia, fading out on a wealthy -- but still unattached -- Charlie strolling about the deck. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
PLEASE NOTE: This disc contains the 1942 version of The Gold Rush with sound and narration by Charlie Chaplin. To see the original 1925 silent version, please rent The Gold Rush (Chaplin Collection).
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| One of the great silent comedies
by ColonelKong
April 6, 2004 - 8:43 AM PDT
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1 out of 1 members found this review helpful
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If you consider fans of silent comedies to be either Charlie Chaplin people or Buster Keaton people, I fall more into the Keaton camp, but Chaplin definitely made some masterpieces too. The Gold Rush is one of my favorite Chaplin films (I'm not sure whether I'd pick The Gold Rush or Modern Times as my favorite), and I think it would make a great introduction to silent films in general. This film contains several of the funniest scenes in Chaplin's whole body of work, such as the famous dinner roll dance, the chicken hallucination (later appropriated by Looney Tunes shorts), the eating of the shoe (years before Werner Herzog!), and the cabin teetering on the edge of the cliff. It also has some pretty impressive special effects work for a 1924 film, and Chaplin's art directors did a convincing job of recreating Alaska on sets in Los Angeles.
Being somewhat of a purist, the original silent version of the film on disc 2 was the one that I watched first, but the 1942 re-issue version with music and narration by Chaplin and sound effects is the one I ended up liking more. It's a little bit faster paced since there are no intertitles (I like my silent films with as few intertitles as possible), and Chaplin tightened it up a little and cut a couple of scenes (nothing I really missed). At first, I was a little resistant to the idea of watching a silent film with this much narration, but after a little while I didn't mind, and Chaplin's voice is enjoyable to listen to (he occasionally sounded just a little bit like Robin Williams while narrating this film). If you like, I suppose that you can look at watching this film with Chaplin's narration sort of like watching a silent film narrated by a benshi (a Japanese silent film narrator, silent films were typically shown in Japan without any intertitles). I also preferred this version's musical score to the rinky-dink piano accompaniment for the original silent version, and the sound effects to the piano player's sometimes awkward attempt to do sound effects.
Even though this is the version of The Gold Rush that I prefer, completists will want to watch both, I believe that the 1942 reissue version also uses a certain amount of alternate footage. The second disc also has production still and poster galleries and a "Chaplin Today" segment that a fan of this film will want to look at. |
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