To recap (mostly for myself), by 1921 and The Kid, Charlie Chaplin enjoyed the following freedoms: Autonomy as lead actor, writer, director, producer, editor, choreographer, composer, et cetera, free to make movies unhindered by financial necessity or the whims of a distributor, subservient solely to his muse. The only way Chaplin’s self-dictated Little Tramp series could get even more privileged would be if Chaplin started his very own movie studio.
Well, he’d already done just that…in 1919, Chaplin created United Artists (with D.W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford) to escape the standard studio system.
We are well into the 1920s now, the height of the silent film era…and Chaplin significantly slows down his output, with the assurance he would remain a draw regardless. It has been opined [citation needed] that Chaplin wouldn’t create new comedies for his Tramp character unless inspiration hit. One could say, with The Kid building upon assorted shorts, that the Tramp had done all he could in his usual setting of urban poverty. The Gold Rush hails a setting switch.
This wouldn’t come out until 1925, four years after The Kid, with nothing in between to rival it (just a few minor shorts such as The Idle Class, Pay Day and The Pilgrim). By modern terms, four years isn’t that long to wait for a sequel, but compare this to Chaplin’s initial turnaround, between Kid Auto Races at Venice and Mabel’s Strange Predicament: Two days! Two days to four years, a quantitative change which indicates the effect of switching over to feature filmmaking. As vindication of this slow-down, The Gold Rush wrangled up an unfathomable gross of $4,250,000, plus one extra dollar. Four million dollars, in 1926 money (the highest grossing of all silent comedies!) – not only did Chaplin remain a draw in considerable absence, he became a rarity, more valuable in measured doses.
The Gold Rush's genesis lies in sudden inspiration, since Chaplin wasn’t simply developing Tramp vehicles willy-nilly, but waiting for the perfect concept. Chaplin read up on the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush, about the hardships prospectors faced in the icy north. For whatever obscure reason, this historical reality of mass poverty and starvation, this material spoke out to Chaplin and said “I would make for an hilarious comedy.”
It’s true that Chaplin’s comedies derive much of their power from non-comic scenarios. Look to the The Kid’s black comedy of child abandonment, then picture an entire movie based around funny death. Slapping the Tramp into 1897 lets Chaplin mine for comedy just as the Tramp simultaneously mines for gold. Some of The Gold Rush’s funniest moments come early, through the simply contrast of the Tramp ambling awkwardly past icy precipices and unseen brown bears.
Actually, The Gold Rush is no mere pastiche of a more ostensibly serious gold rush movie. It is the era’s premiere, nay possibly only worthwhile look into the setting. The Trail of ’98 and Klondike Annie would only come later, for the spirit of copycatting is as old as time itself. Chaplin, in assembling his picture, did painstaking historical research, creating an accurate look back into the nostalgic “Gay Nineties” (tee hee hee!, I know), which just happens to feature the Tramp. Hell, some of Chaplin’s (the director’s) heaviest lifting occurs in sequences not even having to do with the Tramp! Consider his staged recreation of the Chikoot Trail –
- compared to the real deal –
For a comedy film, this is nearing Cecile B. DeMille levels of spectacle, what with the hundreds of faceless extras, meticulously recreated ginormous sets, and an utter lack of special effects to cheapen the effort – “spectacle” is the most successful form of silent film drama. Since Chaplin, with his storied love of pathos, is increasingly inclined to create serio-comic dramedies, it’s welcome that he embraces this mode of seriousness.
Actually, there is an element of The Gold Rush which recalls some of the less maudlin works of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd – fellow comedians more wholly devoted to comedy-as-thriller, comedy-as-stunt-show. There is a palpable danger in the wintry Klondike, well beyond the mere tragedy of the gutter – Chaplin’s favored setting. The Gold Rush is an adventure film, in its way, repeatedly placing the Tramp in harm’s way, then devising comic solutions to rescue him. This being Chaplin, and not Keaton, there is a noted de-emphasis upon stunt work; danger comes from different areas, of greater interest to Chaplin.
For instance, much of The Gold Rush sees the Tramp ensconced away in a single, one-room cabin during the worst of winter. His solitary mate: Big Jim (Mack Swain, professionally enormous man). Ignoring a brief run-in with a murderous fugitive (Tom Murray), the duo mostly holes up to face hunger and want and loneliness – certainly subject matter dear to Chaplin’s heart. Despite whatever hazards the setting itself might toss out – blizzards, bears, cliffs, ice flows, avalanches – cabin fever is Chaplin’s meat. Chaplin himself (or the Tramp, at least) is also meat, to go by Big Jim’s famished hallucinations of a man-sized chicken.
Keaton, given the same setting, would have no doubt emphasized the storm – Steamboat Bill, Jr. provides a good example of that. He would have also played up the mechanical fact of mining, be it panning for gold, or digging shafts, or chipping away at cliff side. It’s surprising then to note that the Tramp never mines on screen, just as the Dude never bowls. One might consider this an oversight on Chaplin’s part, except he clearly retains an interest in depravation for its own sake – In place of a raucous mining set piece, instead the Tramp boils his boots, and eats the laces like spaghetti. (A classic example of Chaplin humor, more gentle than hilarious.) There is greater humanism in joking about hunger, especially with Chaplin’s street urchin childhood, not his millionaire superstar 1920s fame.
It’s easy enough to question how Chaplin could draw out a feature film (meaning now 96 minutes) with the Tramp merely sequestered in a cabin. He cannot. Before the film is even halfway over, Chaplin relocates the Tramp to a gold rush town, to basically forego prospecting lunacy for the rest of the running time. This is, for me, a mistake, as it removes that danger element which makes The Gold Rush so involving. The Tramp, being a timid soul, instead becomes the Alaskan equivalent of a street bum (Levi Johnston?), attempting to survive via odd jobs and whatnot. Snow shoveling, largely, a chance for momentary physical hijinks. This is much closer to a generic Tramp movie, with the setting barely even mattering. Sigh, at least they’re not going with one of those archaic “Tramp falls for the Girl” stories.
Oh curse it all, they are! Meet Georgia (Georgia Hale – no points for that name), the saloon girl. The Tramp falls instantly in love with her and…well, quite frankly, I can barely even recall much of what occupies the vast majority of The Gold Rush – at least, not in the specifics. An occasionally lopsided tale of frontier romance plays out. The Tramp plays each moment of romantic success by smiling warmly towards the camera, or otherwise telegraphing his joy. I suppose it makes me a heartless curmudgeon that I am mostly apathetic towards this. Chaplin’s appeals to genuine emotion, while no doubt hugely effective, always seem somehow distant in my mind. I am more moved by Buster Keaton’s completely emotionless stone face than all the heart-grabbing, spontaneous joy the Tramp evokes. (Yeah, yeah, my devotion to the other great silent comedian becomes my great undoing in trying to engage this series.)
So be it. It still behooves me to at least point out the classic moments. Chief is Thanksgiving dinner, where the Tramp (now inundated with food) performs a little soft shoe routine involving a couple of dancing bread rolls. Just as Duck Soup’s immortal mirror routine didn’t originate with the Marx Brothers, so can Chaplin’s famous loaf dance be traced back further, to The Rough House with Fatty Arbuckle and – oh no, here it comes! – Buster Keaton. Okay, okay, calm down, Chaplin is good, he elevates a forgotten gag to the level of revered pantomime, I am a Grinch.
This whole middle section is, in retrospect, greatly irksome, when the same exact tomfoolery wouldn’t be out of place in a more typical Tramp short. Why? That Klondike setting. There’s so much potential, with the whole great outdoors, and thousands of men all desperately facing the elements to discover minimal financial reward. Why why why take that promise, deliver a few good starvation gags, then revert into the same standard love story as always?! What’d odd is The Gold Rush feels, somehow, less coherently singular than the lesser The Kid – which made its pseudo-fatherhood story the crux. The Gold Rush has moments of greatness, almost all pertaining directly to the fact of, well, a gold rush. The cabin scenes beforehand – totally wonderful. Thankfully, there’s a bit more where that came from.
Pausing for a moment…Chaplin films, more so than other silent comedies, dwell upon their happy endings, to a fault. Whether the Tramp gets the Girl or not, attains wealth or not, there is a carefully controlled emotion (i.e. pathos) to go out on. (Meanwhile, Keaton would sometimes end his onscreen romances with tombstones, to avoid all treacle.) Given a gold rush, the natural conclusion is to see the Tramp attain riches…and Georgia on his side, for good measure. And it just so happens that Big Jim had discovered a mighty gold claim before ever even meeting the Tramp. Only now he’s come down with the amnesia, as obedient to plot as ever, and the cowardly Tramp is called upon to return to the feared Arctic and find Jim’s lode.
So the two head back to the cabin, and it’s astounding to see the Tramp actually, in some vague way, earning his triumph for once. Compare it to A Dog’s Life, where he simple finds stolen riches, the end. Here, the Klondike demands some degree of effort, and even if we never see the Tramp directly seeking gold (despite that being his reason for being in Alaska to begin with!). At least he does something to earn his top hat and monocle at the end.
But first, this happens…
That occurred during an overnight snowstorm, with Jim and the Tramp (sounds like a morning drive-time DJ combo) asleep unaware in their beloved death cabin. And thanks to immortal drunkenness, when the cabin tilts, it’s written off as a hangover. So start many, many minutes of sublime comic suspense, a literal cliffhanger of balancing this precarious building. Now this is the sort of physical adventure I’d hoped for throughout, even if it retains that Chaplinesque air of pantomime, never inching into Keatonian daredevilry. That means when the Tramp wanders out into the drop-off – which is inevitable, given the scenario – his dangling is shown not through insane stunt work, but with a stop motion, miniature Tramp. The effect is rather noticeable today, but it doesn’t harm the sequence – the thrill comes from how things are choreographed, not just executed. And with this climax, The Gold Rush completely redeems itself.
I’ll largely pass over the epilogue in silence, where the Tramp, Robber Baron, has his final romantic reconciliation with Georgia. As an ending, it means to emphasize the value of love over money, and I’m not touching that one.
Postscript: In 1942, Chaplin re-released The Gold Rush as a talkie (…sort of). It features a musical track, with Chaplin himself narrating the film as a substitute for the usual title cards. There are some further changes, to projection speed and the romantic subplot. As tinkering goes, it’s not nearly as infuriating as George Lucas’ Special Editions, but it seems fed by the same sort of myopia. The additional aural elements overemphasize the maudlin pathos of the endeavor, which is appropriate enough in the Georgia sequences, but not really needed with Big Jim. With silence, one is freer to read a preferred mood (the great joy, and great challenge, of silent cinema, which demands much more of the audience). I personally prefer the silent version (which is, oddly enough, completely silent, thanks to the 1942 version’s impact – I just put on some Ennio Morricone instead). Though for the average viewer, the sound version is certainly more accessible. I’d almost call it a perfect gateway to silent films.
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