Country: USA
Director: Charles
Chaplin
‘The Gold Rush’ is probably the first Chaplin film I’ve
watched – at least the first one I knew the title of. I still remember bits and pieces of it but I
forgot most of the scenes and the plot itself such that it was a treat to be
able to see it again. The film is in the
public domain, by the way, and is available in the The Internet Archive but don’t expect
the digitally restored version with the commentaries and features.
The famous table ballet scene was from this movie. I don’t know how Charlie actually came up
with the idea of forking two rolls and animating them to do a
ballet-of-sorts. I also imagine that he
was probably bored at the dining table, just as portrayed in the movie
‘Chaplin’.
The scene where he was forced to eat his boot was one of the
lingering moments in my memory. Knowing
the impossibility of such a thing happening (or is it?) does not in the least
make it an awkward scene. I keep wondering what the boot was actually made of
and found out that it was from licorice.
As the scene took three days to shoot and they made 63 takes, Charlie
was said to have been taken to the hospital for insulin shock.
I must admire Chaplin for having the guts to act with real
live animals with real potential to cause him injury. In this film, he did so with a live brown
bear. I know that the bear they got on
the set was probably tamed and the trainor was always present. Still, the way the bear moves leaves me
thinking how this could have easily turned ugly. Or maybe that also added to the appeal of the
scene. Movies during this time are said
to use costumed actors for live wild animals.
I also liked the scene when Charlie’s two companions were
fighting over a gun. In their struggles,
the muzzle of the gun points to Charlie and he tries desperately to get out of
the line of fire. Too slapstick, you
might say, but Chaplin does the scene with such funny moves that one forgets
the impossibility of the matter and laugh out loud.
I wonder if it really was Charlie who dressed up as the
giant chicken. Anyone could have done
it; but seeing how the chicken moved, there’s really no mistake that it was
Charlie who donned the silly costume.
As with the other movies of Charlie featuring the Tramp,
there was a woman with whom his character falls deeply in love. In this movie, it was Georgia, played
by Georgia Hale. I wonder if Charlie
would have named the character Lita after his wife at the time. The latter was supposed to act as Charlie’s
love interest in the movie but she got pregnant with Chaplin’s child just
before the shooting of the movie.
Of course, there was the scene of the cabin teetering on the
brink of the cliff. This was the most
memorable part of the film for me. I remember
laughing uncontrollably at this scene when I watched it during my gradeschool
days. Chaplin seemed to like the idea of
people losing their balance. Prior to
seeing the film again, I was thinking whether I would still laugh at the jokes
that I’ve seen before. I thought I was
too old to laugh at such impossible scenes.
Turns out that the movie has the power of making me feel young again and
laugh at Charlie and his antics all over again.
‘The Gold Rush’ became widely regarded as one of Chaplin’s best
work and he himself was quoted that it was the film for which he wanted to be
remembered. Charlie probably got his
wish as it was the highest ranking Chaplin film at #58 in the 2007 list made by
the American Film Institute of 100 best American movies. Incidentally, the film
was also given tribute in Cinema Paradiso’s kissing montage.
