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Hello, fellow movie buffs. This page is our tribute to the ground-breaking work of film makers of the 1920's and 1930's. We will offer our views and reviews of selected films from those eras, and at the same time give you the opportunity to tell us what you think. Take a second to check out our links section.
Abysmal. Complete trash-- bad acting, writing, cinematography, etc.
Bomb. One or two redeeming qualities, but inferior overall.
Average. Not outstanding in most respects, but worth checking out.
I
had a ball. Solid acting, writing, cinematography, etc. Superior in many
respects.
Excellent.
A true classic. Superior acting, writing, cinematography, etc. Few, if
any, flaws.
Running Time: 80 minutes.
The Gold Rush is essentially a slapstick adventure set in Alaska. We have A Lone Prospector (Chaplin) haplessly looking for fortune in the rough and tumble world of the untamed North. The prospector meets up with three pivotal characters while bumbling and fumbling in Alaska. First he meets t he bad guy--Black Larson. Then he meets his soon-to-be best friend--Big Jim McCay. Lastly he meets the girl he falls in love with--Georgia. The exchanges between each of these characters and the prospector are priceless.
The prospector first meets Black Larson by stumbling into his cabin to escape a raging storm. Totally unsympathetic, Black attempts to force the prospector to leave. However, the a strong wind (the wind of Fate???) keeps blowing the little scamp back into the cabin. Larson is the antithesis of the prospector. He is unkind, brutal, and unloved. Most importantly, he winds up burried in an avalanche. There is a message there.
We meet Big Jim McCay when he also stumbles along Larson's cabin. Unlike the tramp, McCay is a big man who will not be bullied by Larson. While the tramp uses cunning and intelligence to outdo Larson, McCay uses his physical strength. McCay makes a big strike and becomes unbelievably rich. Note, however, that he attains his goal (wealth) through luck, while the tramp attains his goals because of his essentially good character. Once again, there is a message there.
Georgia is a typical early American woman. She is beautiful, but there is an element of danger to her. She needs to be tamed, and this is what the little Tramp does. He wins her over and steals her heart, not because he is handsome and suave, but because he is truly endearing. Most interestingly, he steals Georgia away from Jack, a much better looking man who cares little about Georgia and more about himself. Yet again, there is a message there.
The film represents a clear vision of how Chaplin saw the world, or perhaps, his idealized vision of the world. It is not by coincidence that the prospector has no specific name--he represents every man, the common man. And, it is the common man who triumphs with intelligence and a good heart. He beats all the odds and attains all of his goals. This is essentially an optimists view of life.
Chaplin wrote, directed, and starred in this film. If you have never seen Chaplin perform before, I would highly recommend that you view this film. Take all of the great modern physical comedians and stack them up, and they would still not stand as tall as Chaplin in ability. It is a true delight to watch a great clown perform, and Chaplin performs like none other in this film. There are also some scenes in which Chaplin shows off his dramatic side. Even without the benefit of sound, he conveys emotion clearly. This is one of the great performances of all times.
Flaws? I didn't see any beyond whatever technical limitations were on filmmakers
of the day. The lighting could have been better. The film is a bit out
of focus from time to time. Some of the sets look obviously fake. Notwithstanding
all of this, the film still represents cinema at its best. My rating:
Before beginning my review, I just want to thank those of you out there who have stuck with our page over the past ten months or so, and I sincerely apologize for my period of absence. While I was deeply embroiled in other concerns, Boomer's diligence kept this site up and running, and I applaud what he has done. I hope that our readership doesn't mind the return of those somber and melancholic sensibilities which I typically bring to both the critiques and the movie selections, but heck, we always knew Boomer was the upbeat one, didn't we?
Along with such films as The Kid and Modern Times, The Gold Rush is one of Charlie Chaplin's most widely acclaimed efforts, and for good reason. Within the confines of a story that would otherwise be meaningless and fragmentary, the "Little Tramp" operates as a nexus of purpose and integrity, synthesizing plot, character and setting into a painfully hilarious whole. I say "painfully" because, as is often the case with slapstick, the humor in this movie rests atop a stratum of harsh and unremitting violence. After watching Chaplin's virtuoso sublimation of this violence into something which is both entertaining and topically non-threatening, I, like Boomer,feel compelled to label him as the paragon of physical comedy, primarily because his portrayal of the Little Tramp lays bare the dark side of such comedy. The laughter that the Tramp produces is almost always at his own expense, and even though he seems to triumph by movie's end, it is only after a painful odyssey of victimization in which he has been buffeted about by physical, natural, and social forces.
Owing perhaps to an intrinsic and ultimately ineffable quality of silent films, The Gold Rush offers us a lucid visual allegory in which the Tramp is surrounded by embodiments of all the various drives and processes which oppose him. Representing physical violence born of human greed and cruelty, the aptly named "Black" Larsen (Murray) is, in my opinion, one of the movie's most profoundly disturbing characters. There is one scene in which he grabs the Tramp by the hair, shoves his head roughly back, grabs him by the hair again, holds the blade of a knife to his throat,then shoves his head roughly back a second time. This is not lightsome fare by any stretch of the imagination. Nor is the scene in which Larsen shoots two law enforcement officers to death. Call me overly sensitive, but this sort of thing seems much more unsettling than those stray moments of violence in Cable Guy which so many moviegoers got jittery about.
As Boomer has already mentioned, Larsen eventually pays for his wrongdoings by falling prey to the mechanisms of an even more powerful and detached menace, namely, Nature itself. The placard appearing immediately before Larsen's demise notes that Nature has a "Law" of its own, and yet we hardly need such a reminder by this point in the film. While the sight of the collapsing ice bridge is undeniably spectacular, we have been bombarded by countless other manifestations of Nature's unfeeling, inexorable grind -- the ceaseless drifts of snow, the icy blasts of wind, and, most significantly, the scarcity of food which creates such painful hunger within the Tramp and the other characters.
As if all of this weren't enough, when the Tramp finally frees himself from the icy grasp of the Northern wastes and finds his way to one of Alaska's many boomtowns, he comes up against the equally uncaring and potent forces of society, represented most poignantly by the pale,luminescent Georgia (Hale). Granted, both Georgia's female friends and Jack "The Ladies'Man" function as similar avatars of social cruelty, but there is something about Georgia's demeanor and behavior which I find particularly insidious. I agree with Boomer, insofar as I feel that Georgia is dangerous, but I would take this even further, and designate her as the most disturbing character of the film, "Black" Larsen notwithstanding. When the Tramp first visits the dance hall, Georgia looks past and around him on two eparate occasions, as if he weren't even there. Then, in an attempt to offend Jack and perhaps inspire some jealousy, she finally acknowledges the Tramp's presence, asking him for a turn on the floor and commenting that she is very particular about the people with whom she dances. Carrying this insensitive, self-serving charade of romantic interest even further, Georgia later exploits the tramp's affection for her by promising to have dinner with him on New Year's Eve, thinking that she and her friends can get a good laugh by building up his hopes and then failing to attend. Admittedly,Georgia does seem touched when she shows up over four hours late on the appointed evening and sees how much effort the Tramp has put into the dinner. Also, she betrays a moment of tenderness at the movie's end, offering to pay his fare aboard a passenger ship when it looks as if he is going to be "clamped in irons" as a stowaway. Nevertheless, I am much more sceptical of all this than Boomer is, feeling it to be suggestive of pity, rather than love. Even if we are to assume that the Tramp and Georgia marry after the final fade to black, I feel that this eventuality has more to do with the Tramp's ew-found wealth than it does with Georgia's appreciation of his basic innocence and decency.
If you are still with me by this point in the review, Dear Reader, you must be thinking "My gosh, why would I want to watch a film described in such a bleak and utterly depressing manner?"
The answer is, you may not, but I genuinely hope you do. Andrew "Dice" Clay, a contemporary comic who has taken a lot of flack for being inhumane and unpleasant, once commented that some of his work is more about comedy than it is about laughter, and I would argue that the same is true of The Gold Rush. By observing the Little Tramp as he doggedly struggles against the mandates of circumstance and causality --breaking off icicles to boil water before breakfast, "knocking out" a bully by striking a post upon which a clock precariously hangs, etc.-- you can become more fully aware of the cosmic humor to be found in the bleakest moments of human existence. With all due respect to Jack Lemmon, I thus find Chaplin to be the quintessential Everyman of our nation's cinema, meticulously exposing all the flaws in that grand American dream of working hard, making
good, and getting the girl you love, even as he chases after it.
My rating:
..
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