The Gold Rush

Plot synopsis:
It is in the middle of the Gold Rush. A Lone Prospector (Charlie Chaplin) searches the tundra for gold. But he finds more than gold; he finds love, and an uproarious adventure that forever change the lives of the people he meets.As far as an exact synopsis with the REQUIRED spoilers goes, the Lone Prospector barges into the only cabin in sight during a blizzard and starts gnawing on an old bone left by occupant Black Larsen (Tom Murray). Larsen tries to eject the LP, but another "lone prospector," Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain) also is soon blown into the now-crowded cabin. As the men starve, they cut a deck of cards to see who will go for help and food. Since Larsen draws a deuce of Spades (to the LP's three of spades, and Big Jim's jack of clubs), he must leave, taking his dog with him. In subsequent, unconnected scenes, we see the wanted Larsen gun down two lawmen who recognize him, taking their food and dog team, and discovering McKay's lucky strike claim. Meanwhile, back at the cabin, the starving Big Jim starts to hallucinate that the smaller Lone Prospector is a giant chicken, and eventually attacks him by shotgun and knife. All this, despite the fact that the LP has boiled his right shoe and served Big Jim the "upper" (while settling for the nail-ridden sole, himself). Just as things are getting out of hand, a bear barges into the cabin, and the LP presumably shoots it after it has lumbered back out, solving the prospector's hunger issues. Soon they part ways. Big Jim is shown finding Larsen working his gold strike. When Jim remonstrates, Larsen brains him with a shovel and flees, but quickly falls to his death when a snow ledge breaks off into a chasm.Meanwhile, the Lone Prospector has stumbled into a town and sold his pick and ax, but still sports just one shoe (with his right foot swaddled in cloth). He enters the local "Monte Carlo" dance hall, and is smitten with one of the dance hall girls, Georgia, who herself is being pursued by "ladies' man" Jack Cameron. The LP finds a souvenir photo torn by Jack and discarded on the floor by Georgia, and conceals it in his clothing. Meanwhile, Georgia does not like Jack's raucous behavior, so she dances with the Lone Prospector to spite Jack. After this dance, Jacks accosts Georgia, who flees to a dressing room. When the LP prevents Jack from following, the bigger man blinds the LP by pulling his derby down over his eyes. While the LP is temporarily sightless, a hanging clock falls to cold-cock Jack, and the LP leaves the dance hall, thinking he's won the fight. The next morning, an again hungry Lone Prospector bamboozles cabin-owning prospector Hank Curtis (Henry Bergman) into feeding him coffee and beans. Soon Curtis appoints the LP to be his cabin-sitter as Curtis and his partner return to their own claim. Shortly thereafter, Georgia and three friends have a snowball fight outside the front door of this cabin (which is within earshot of the dance hall), which ends with the LP getting hit in the face with a snowball as he opens his front door. The quartet of dance hall girls come in for a minute, and while the LP goes for more firewood, Georgia discovers the torn picture of herself under his pillow. Upon his return, one of Georgia's colleagues gives the LP an inadvertent "hot-foot" by discarding a match on his right foot after lighting a cigarette. When the fire is extinguished, the LP invites the girls to come back and Georgia promises they will return at 8 p.m. New Years' Eve. A deliriously-happy LP has a pillow fight with himself in the midst of a gymnastics routine after the quartet leaves, so Georgia finds him looking like a giant chicken for real when she comes back a moment later for her forgotten gloves. In order to get money for his upcoming party, the LP shovels the same pile of snow in front of several town businesses, demanding a higher shovel-out fee from each successive business owner.New Year's Eve comes, and the Lone Prospector has his cabin decorated, with the table set for five, and party hats plus wrapped presents at the places reserved for his four female guests. He imagines being asked for a speech, to which he instead responds with the (now-famous) "roll dance" (in which he pretends two rolls skewered with forks are little legs and feet dancing on the table in front of himself). Meanwhile, back at the dance hall, the clock strikes midnight, the Lone Prospector is long-forgotten, Georgia fires a few pistol shots into the ceiling, and a mob of prospectors and dance hall girls sing "Auld Lang Syne" before breaking out to dance to "Turkey in the Straw." The commotion wakens the heart-broken LP, who wanders down toward the noise. Meanwhile, the dance hall girls finally remember their "date" with the LP, and the quartet walks up to the cabin with Jack, who plans to scare his former rival. Finding the cabin empty, Jack forces himself upon Georgia, who slaps him in the face. Back at the dance hall, Georgia writes a note of apology to Jack, saying she loves him, and sends it down from her balcony to Jack on the main floor via messenger. The now-dismissive Jack spies the Lone Prospector in the crowd, and tells a barman to deliver the note--which lacks the name of an addressee--to the LP. A no-longer crestfallen LP tries to get to Georgia in the balcony, but Big Jim McKay (who has amnesia since Black Larsen brained him with a shovel, preventing him from remembering the location of his "mountain of gold"), grabs the Lone Prospector first and says he'll make him a millionaire within a month if the LP can guide him back to the cabin in which they met Black Larsen. The LP races up the balcony to hug a startled Georgia, and then rushes into the next scene, in which he and Jim return to the cabin, better-provisioned than previously. Overnight, another blizzard blows this cabin right to Jim's claim and beyond--half over a cliff. In the morning, Jim and the LP awake to a teeter-totter experience lasting many tense minutes, before the LP is roped out of the cabin by Jim as it's falling into a chasm.The final scene finds Jim and the Lone Prospector as millionaires on a ship departing Alaska. As Jim settles into their suite for a manicure, the LP humors the news media by changing from his swank morning suit into his old mining clothes and shoe. Meanwhile, an unknowing Georgia lurks on the deck below, confined to steerage. A ship's officer tells her to be on the look-out for a stowaway. Just then, a press photographer causes the Lone Prospector to fall backwards, landing at Georgia's feet. Before the LP can say anything to Georgia, who assumes he's the stowaway, the ship's officer returns to apprehend the presumed wrong-doer. Georgia pleads for mercy, digging into her pocket to pay the "stowaways" steerage fare. By then the ship's captain and media have arrived in steerage to explain the LP is really a "multi-millionaire." The Lone Prospector tells the ship's steward to prepare room for Georgia in his luxury suite, and as they pose for a press photo on the first-class deck, the LP gives Georgia a lingering kiss. (By now she is presumably his fiancee.) The end.

Tags: romantic, comedy, entertaining

Review:
Charlie and Big Jim are left alone and without food when Larson goes off to face the storm looking for food (having drawn the lowest card in another amusing scene), and the scenes in the cabin are some of the best in the entire film.
I am still amazed every time I watch the film at how realistic it looks when there is a long shot from outside showing Charlie hanging from the door of the cabin, which is balanced precariously on the edge of a cliff.
Chaplin's full length films are inherently more famous than his earlier short comedies, and The Gold Rush is one of the best of his full length features.
A must see for any Chaplin fan, but The Gold Rush is also a film that anyone who is interested in quality comedy should watch..
It was Charlie Chaplin's third feature-length film, and marked his comeback of sorts following A Woman of Paris (1923), which he had directed to great critical acclaim but which had been unsuccessful at the box office because it lacked his signature character The Little Tramp.
This movie should be counted among Chaplin's best and most enduring works; many people name City Lights (which I've also seen) as THE best Chaplin movie, but The Gold Rush is still an excellent showcase for one of movie comedy's immortal geniuses.Having first seen this movie years ago on TV, I saw it again in October 2003 as part of my college's silent-film class, on a poor-quality videotape that often prevented the other students and I from laughing at it because we could barely discern what was happening on the screen.
Even so, I was sufficiently intrigued to buy the GR Chaplin Collection DVD, which has a restored silent version of the film that is so good I haven't even bothered to watch the 1942 sound version that's also on the disc.The viewing quality of this restored silent version is excellent, although certain minor details are still hard to see, such as the faces of the cards drawn by the Tramp, Jim McKay and Black Larsen as they try to determine who should go out into the blizzard.
But these are minor complaints, and certainly the restoration allows for full appreciation of the film.The first half-hour of The Gold Rush is in itself worth the purchase price, as it contains some of the funniest scenes I've ever seen in any movie.
And the shoe-eating scene is so famously funny that even people watching it for the first time may feel that they've seen it already: this is in no way a bad thing, but merely reflects the fact that the best silent films long ago entered into the collective memory of our culture.I don't say this to sound pretentious.
Only he could have distilled humor from scenes of starvation and struggles to survive the ravings of a madman.The joy of watching this film today stems from seeing how well Chaplin, as both star and director, finds and maintains the right tone and style for his work, negotiating the fine line between comedy and tragedy.
This is most evident in the scene when McKay and Larsen struggle for the shotgun in the cabin and the Tramp tries desperately to escape the muzzle's aim: the sequence is undeniably hilarious, yet even today the Tramp's grim predicament is just as likely to horrify the viewer.One pleasure of silent comedies such as The Gold Rush is that the lack of a soundtrack leaves more to the imagination, in the same manner that old-time radio comedy got laughs from funny sound effects that showed the audience nothing.
I don't want to spoil the climax for anyone who hasn't seen it, but I believe that even today it remains one of the most vivid depictions in cinema history of man versus the elements, and Chaplin milked all its potential for comedy and suspense.Mack Swain is hilarious as Jim McKay, creating a memorable comic image with his ridiculously small boots and high-domed fur coat.
The ending is cheerfully cynical, improbably reuniting two characters and never revealing Georgia's true feelings for the Tramp.But the bottom line is that The Gold Rush is still funny after almost eighty years, and that's a feat few comedies in any year can ever accomplish.
Like all great movies, The Gold Rush has more than its share of memorable moments, from the Thanksgiving dinner to the dance of the dinner rolls to the cabin teetering on the edge of the mountain.
The film moves along at a brisk pace, following the misadventures of our hero, The Lone Prospector (Charlie Chaplin, of course), as he attempts to hit it big by discovering gold in Alaska.
There are some memorable scenes in the prospectors' rickety cabins, plus some other good material.The version of this that is the easiest to find is the one that Chaplin re-edited in the 1940's, adding his own narration and deleting the title cards, which gives it a slightly different feel.
(These revisions probably make it a bit easier to follow for those who aren't used to silent films.) You can tell from Chaplin's narration how fond he must have been of "The Gold Rush", and he had a lot of good reasons to be pleased with it.
Charlie Chaplin's silent film (also re-released with a narration in the early 1940s) focuses, as usual, on the Little Tramp, and in this case, his attraction to a chorus girl (Georgia Hale).
Charlie Chaplin is the Lone Prospector who goes to Klondike, Alaska in search of gold.There he meets and falls in love to beautiful Georgia (Georgia Hale).In cold and snowy Alaska he rambles forward looking for gold with his fellow prospector Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain) thinking of her.A genius called Charlie Chaplin made in 1925 this silent movie masterpiece known as The Gold Rush.Now nearly 80 years after the film was made we get to watch this genius in a tramp suit doing his job.And he did it well.Better than probably anybody.He could make us laugh and he could make us cry.Maybe even both of those at the same time.Chaplin realized that every good comedy has a little tragedy.
THE GOLD RUSH (United Artists, 1925), written, directed and starring Charlie Chaplin, may not be the very best of the Chaplin feature comedies of the silent era, but has become the very movie in which Chaplin wanted to be most noted for by future generations.
Then in the summer of 1971, THE GOLD RUSH became the initial movie presented on public broadcasting station's 13-week series of "The Silent Years," as hosted by Orson Welles, from the Paul Killian collection with a new and excellent piano score by William Perry.THE GOLD RUSH, which is set in the turn of the century, opens with The Lone Prospector (Charlie Chaplin) coming to Alaska.
The results that follow is classic Chaplin.Aside from a large list of supporting players, which consists of frequent Chaplin character actor Henry Bergman as Hank Curtis, "The Gold Rush" contains many now classic comedy supplements, including the starving Charlie cooking his boot in hot water, and using his shoelace as spaghetti; Charlie's encounter with Georgia; and the near end finale in which Charlie and Big Jim return to the cabin before setting out to find the claim, in which the cabin gets blown away during the blizzard that forces the cabin to be found the next morning halfway over the edge of a cliff which starts to tilt back and forth as the men make their slightest movement.
The most famous sequence of the entire movie is the one where Charlie falls asleep and dreams of himself entertaining his dinner guests by using two forks in two potato rolls as his feet and doing a dance for them.With THE GOLD RUSH being Chaplin's most revived and discussed movie, one must never forget his other artistic achievements that followed, including THE CIRCUS (1928), CITY LIGHTS (1931), MODERN TIMES (1936) and his talkie debut of THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940).
The Gold Rush, while not Chaplin's best film, does feature his best performance and has so many classic bits, it must be seen.
There are plenty of great scenes:Chaplin and Mack Swain in the cabin,crazy with hunger and cabin fever,the touching New Year's Eve party and finally the hilarious finale with the cabin out on the edge of a cliff.The later version which was released with added narration and music wasn't as good as the original,but easier for modern audiences to watch..
It is that ending which makes the Gold Rush the best of Chaplin's works and the one I will watch just for the sheer joy of seeing the artist in his prime.
Once I adjusted to the "silence" of Charlie Chaplin's 1925 silent film, I was able to watch it like any other movie.
While it is impossible to ignore the movie as a silent film, it is equally impossible to ignore it as a great comedy that could capably rival any modern comedy, and, like Chaplin's character, come out on top.
In a story often related by film scholars to wide-eyed students, Chaplin set about creating the comic scenarios for his 1925 classic (I would use the word masterpiece, but he seemed to have made a number of these) The Gold Rush after being inspired by the true tales of cannibalism among the stranded Donner party.
The Gold Rush (1925)If you see this classic Charlie Chaplin movie, it better be the silent version, if only because this is the pure intention, uncompromised.
The 1942 version is a little shorter and faster, but it has Chaplin giving narration instead of using the inter-titles, and he says unnecessary stuff, and it interferes.The best parts of this classic as so good, and so honestly original, and so perfectly unashamedly comic, there is nothing like it.
Chaplin is also gifted with a highly talented supporting cast to play off of, including the admirably ferocious Mack Swain as a brutish fellow prospector and Georgia Hale, noteworthy for being a laudably ambiguous love interest rather than the one dimensional beauties often showcased in Chaplin's films.Arguably one of the strongest cinematic works produced during the silent era, The Gold Rush is more likely to evoke refreshingly genuine raucous laughter, heartfelt tears and finally leave the viewer with an unquenchable beaming smile on their face than almost any film made before or since.
Right now, I still haven't seen too many, but recently, for the first full-length silent comedy to see, I chose "The Gold Rush", a film written, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin, a highly renowned filmmaker of his time, as I was aware of this movie's wide appeal, as well as the wide appeal of much of Chaplin's other work.
I wasn't as impressed with it as much as many others have been, but all in all, it was a good experience.Set in the year 1898, during the gold rush of the time (hence the title of the film), Chaplin stars as a silly prospector, one of the many who have bravely come up to face the harsh weather conditions of Alaska, in search for gold!
He experiences being marooned in the cabin with a fellow prospector named Big Jim McKay, both of them without food, and also falls in love with a woman he meets in Alaska named Georgia, and attempts to win her heart!"The Gold Rush" definitely has some very funny and memorable gags.
And I think that's what movie audiences responded to during his hey-day and what they're still responding to now.Perhaps no other scene in a Chaplin film (at least of the ones I've seen) captures this feeling more than the one in "The Gold Rush" where Chaplin has gone to a great deal of effort to prepare a New Year's dinner and is stood up by his date, spending his New Year's alone.
This is the movie with the famous "dancing potatoes" scene, and wait till you see Chaplin eat his boot for dinner, slurping up his shoelace like it's a spaghetti noodle.I strongly recommend Chaplin films to anyone who is moderately interested in early cinema but is turned off by the idea of silent pictures.
The scenes do seem a little bit over done at times though.The movie is about just what is sounds like, Chaplin finds him self searching for gold,and comedy ensues.
One of the quissential silent movies ever made, 'The Gold Rush' is by far Chaplin's best work, has a lot of signature pieces in it, and shows great characterization of the tramp character (eg, putting him in such a strange locale, the Alaskan Gold Rush).
Living in an age where the norm in cinema is heavy action, verbal comedy, and almost all the visuals are done with special effects, Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush is something I watched out of boredom and did not expect to be as good as it is.
There are countless great scenes here but my personal favorite has to be the sequence in the cabin where the hungry Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain) sees Chaplin's character as a chicken.The way that sequence plays out and the timing is just flawless.
Charlie Chaplin revises his famous role of the little tramp, this time he's out to make it big in the Alaskan gold rush.
The version I watched was the 1942 re-release, which featured a new score, as well as narration from Chaplin himself.Charlie Chaplin is famous for being an influence on many films after his time, which I did not truly appreciate until I saw this movie.
I couldn't tell you what made Chaplin decide some scenes needed narration and others didn't, but I appreciate the restraint, and the understanding that sometimes, narration or dialogue would do more harm than good.I'm usually not that into old films, but The Gold Rush completely won me over.
Proclaimed by Chaplin as the film by which he most wanted to be remembered, 'The Gold Rush' has gone onto much acclaim, but those expecting the charm of 'City Lights' and imaginative sets and situations of 'Modern Times' may be disappointed.
The Gold Rush is a fun adventure with several highlights, but I think a shorter running time for silent films works better.
Along the way, trouble ensues from fellow gold-seekers, love blossoms with a local saloon girl (Georgia Hale), who may not feel as strongly as the prospector does, and many classic silent-era magic is created.Chaplin, who directed, wrote, produced, edited, and starred in this film said this would be his opus; the film he wanted to be remembered for and it would appear he got his wish.
Sandwiched in between the failure of his non-comedy A Woman of Paris and his final days as a silent star in which he was up against the coming of sound, Charlie Chaplin made his most stupendous and expensive film to date, aptly named The Gold Rush.
There are two different versions of this film.I was unaware when I rented the DVD that this was true,and the first of the two versions I viewed was the edited for sound 1942 rerelease.This has none other than Chaplin himself narrating the film.While I found the film to be good,I found myself being slightly annoyed and distracted by Chaplin's chatter,though I am sure he had the best of intentions.After viewing this,I decided to rent the bonus disc which included the original totally silent release from 1925.Though it is a restored version (the piano soundtrack is brand new),I found myself able to enjoy it a lot better.Charlie Chaplin was a genius as a film maker and performer,and it shows here.The Gold Rush is typical Chaplin with its combination of humor and romance,and it even has an edge of the seat thrill toward the end that will rival anything you see today.It's a great film,but when you see it,see it in its original and best silent form..
At first sight, "The Gold Rush" may seem as just another of the Tramp's adventures, but this film goes beyond the slapstick and presents a testament of Chaplin's ideology about life: that there is no laugh without a tear, and that tragedy and comedy walk the very same path.
While Chaplin's intentions were definitely good, "The Gold Rush" is a film that works better in silent form, without the need of anyone narrating or explaining it because it explains itself on its own.Charlie Chaplin was an artist that really knew his craft (his preference for silent comedy shows this), and had a perfect understanding of human nature.
Having lived in poverty in his young years, he knew better than anybody the value of a laugh in the harsher times, so probably he was the only one able to made a film like "The Gold Rush", the film that took Chaplin's comedy to the highest levels.
Charlie Chaplin is a film star who transcends time and not just for those who enjoy silent movies.
We see our story set in the rugged gold rush times in Alaska and Canada known as the Klondike Gold Rush, Chaplin is a lone prospector and he has come to seek his fortune like many others, but some people will help him whilst others will not.The film is as much at times a drama as it is a comedy mixing gags with truly emotional scenes, Chaplin yet again proves himself not only a great actor, but also a director at that level too.
A lone prospector(Chaplin, shy and kind, giving the best of all the great physical performances of anyone in this; he also wrote the narration he provides for the version I watched(of this otherwise silent film, and one can see how it worked purely from its visual storytelling), which is 68 minutes long, or 69 if you count the ending credits) goes to Klondike on the titular gold rush(albeit ironically, this is more of a backdrop), meeting new friends, enemies...
"The Gold Rush" I think is one of the best Charlie Chaplin's movies of all time.
The Gold rush is the second Charlie Chaplin film I've watched recently the other being Modern Time, and both have blown me away.
Whose sentimentality can just warm your heart and make you smile.I think out of two i have scene i prefer Modern Times but that along with The Gold Rush, and Charlie Chaplin in general just have a timeless quality and still remain so effective even now, 80 years on..