The Gold Rush (1925)

USA, 81 minutes (72 minutes, 1942 re-release)
Director/writer/editor: Charles Chaplin
Photography: Roland Totheroh
Music: Charles Chaplin (1942)
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Georgia Hale, Henry Bergman, Malcolm Waite

The Gold Rush offers another example of a classic movie that exists in multiple, somewhat controversial versions, although in this case, sadly enough, it's the auteur himself who is arguably the villain in the drama. Chaplin, in 1942—likely emboldened by his ability to survive in the "talkie" era, as evidenced by his three previous, laudable efforts, City Lights, Modern Times, and The Great Dictator, all of which managed to maintain the aesthetics he had established in the silent era even as they took shrewd advantage of the developing technologies—set himself to recutting The Gold Rush, which many consider his greatest picture. He trimmed away some 10 minutes, scored it, and then made the colossal error of removing the intertitles in favor of adding his own voiceover narration.

I was first exposed to the original version in a film class some 30 years ago—where, again, I wish I would have paid a little more attention (or at least kept my notes from the class), because I have to think the instructor, Rob Silberman, must have discussed these versions, and deliberately chose to show us the original. But I was blissfully unaware a year or two ago when I finally got around to seeing it again, and found, lo and behold, the simpering, unctuous voice of Chaplin carrying on as if he is reading bedtime stories to children. It seemed to me unbearable.


So my first impulse when I knew I was going to write about it was to find the original. I found the choices are not entirely pleasant: 1) go with the 1942 remake, which is the version carried by Netflix and otherwise most easily available, 2) get a copy of the 2003 Warner Home Video two-disc DVD package, which includes the original as a special feature on the second disc, or 3) get a VHS copy of the original. The second option is probably best in a perfect world, but currently that package is out of print and prices for used copies start at $40; for new versions, it's $90 and more. The VHS versions are much more reasonable, in the range of a few dollars or less, but there the trick is working with indifferent sellers on determining the version. By trial and error (and luck) I finally found that the Vintage Video edition, labeled (wrongly) as running 112 minutes, is indeed what I was looking for. But it's a mediocre public domain print, scored indifferently with what sounds like a series of Django Reinhardt tunes. And the intertitles can drift so far to the left of the frame that the first letters of words get clipped off.

Is it worth the effort? Yes and no. I don't happen to count it among my favorite Chaplins—I would put it after the titles I mentioned above, and perhaps after The Kid as well. But many do call it his best and it's not hard to see why. It contains some of his most ingenious and cleverly worked out sight gags and physical comedy. Even the choice to set it in turn-of-the-20th-century Alaska is unusual and interesting, ripe for exploitation by Chaplin's fertile visual comedy, which takes place, as usual, among the desperately indigent. The love story elements—involving a dancehall girl named Georgia (played by Georgia Hale)—are generally awkward and ineffective, an unnecessary appendage, so much so that it helps me understand better all the usual complaints about Chaplin's overly sentimental bent. Except for an unexpected and somewhat unbelievable turn at the end, and a few foreshadowing intimations of it before that, she is mostly unlikeable. (Well, for that matter, so was the flower girl for a minute or two at the end of City Lights—but then she straightens right up.)

As with the first time I saw this I was most impressed with the famous set pieces. In a scene in which a shoe is devoured as the main entrée in a Thanksgiving meal (I understand it's actually made of licorice) the comedy is all in the way that Chaplin treats it as food, and more than that, as a sumptuous dining experience. The laces are eaten as if they were spaghetti and the sole tenderly bitten into like a chop of meat, with the nails treated like bones from which he sucks the meat clean. He is utterly unself-conscious about all of this, simply enjoying his meal with a good deal of gusto, even as his unhappy partner looks on in patent disbelief at the spectacle.

In the "dance of the rolls," a very quick bit that is presented as part of a dream sequence, he spears two long dinner rolls on forks and puts them through the paces of a can-can dance. This is the scene that most impressed me the first time I saw it—I didn't realize it at the time but, as with Children of Paradise more recently (and probably Michael Jackson's moon walk too, now that I think of it), I was actually finding my way in here to the amazing art of mime. The "dance of the rolls" is so tightly focused, just the forks and dinner rolls standing in as the shins and feet of a dance performer, that it seemed more like some illusion or magic trick. I simply wanted to gape at it and experience it over and over.

I also enjoy picking some of Chaplin's odd signifiers out of the action here, which tend to become even more funny as I note and start watching for them. For example, whenever he takes a drink he tends to grab his ass and rub it, as if making sure it is still there, to signal how the booze has gone to his head. In other films, notably City Lights, he frequently uses a gesture in which one throws one's jacket or coat half off, taking it off the shoulders, to show he is ready and willing to fight if that's what's going to be required in the situation. And, of course, the subversively gay gestures of outlandish eyelash-batting and cocked-head coy smiles that he produces around larger men he wants to impress with his good intentions.

As for the two versions of The Gold Rush, I gathered them up together and watched them back to back. I still prefer the original, and am happy to have the access to it, but the music is better in the 1942 remake and the superior print I think helps do a better job of telling the story and keeping the narrative points straight. The voiceover narration may have had some hand in that as well and was not as grating this time. But what I really want is something we'll never have: the print quality and music of the remake applied to the original. Maybe if the price ever comes down I'll get a chance to see if the print quality, at least, isn't there on that DVD package.