Gold Rush
Year: 1925
Charlie Chaplin

Watching The Gold Rush, one is amazed at the way this almost eighty- year old silent film keeps one’s attention riveted throughout with a brilliant concoction of slapstick comedy, impressive special effects and sweet sentimentality. Even though some of his other films hogged much more critical acclaim, Charlie himself held this particular film quite dear to his heart.

This 1925-film tells the story of the early days of twentieth century, when hordes of people descended on icy cold terrains of Alaska, trying to find the elusive gold-mines. Charlie plays a lone prospector, who along with another gold-hunter Big Jim has to take refuge in a cabin of Black Larson- an outlaw, as a terrible snow-storm breaks out. Amidst extreme cold, ice and hunger these three inmates fight, bicker and try to survive. One brilliant scene here is how Charlie ‘cooks’ a shoe and savours it like a delicacy and another is when a starving Big Jim hallucinates and imagining Charlie to be a huge, stuffed chicken tries to slaughter him!

Later in the movie, each inmate goes his own way- Black Larsen becoming an avalanche-victim, Big Jim finding his gold but losing his memory and Charlie drifting to a distant town to become a snow-digger. Charlie falls in love with a girl- who is already seeing a guy. The girl initially just uses Charlie as a prop to get back at her haughty boy-friend but soon realizes that her affection for the poor tramp is genuine love. One of the touching scenes here is a dejected, lonely Charlie breaking down after realizing that the girl and her friends have taken him for a ride and have not bothered to attend his carefully planned new-year- eve dinner!

The interesting climax ensues when Big Jim takes Charlie to relocate the forgotten map from Black Larsen’s cabin. The delighted duo reaches their destination, only to find themselves in a precarious balancing act the next day with cabin hanging horizontally on a steep vertical cliff. As all goes well and the two prospectors become rich and famous, Charlie also stumbles across his lost love!

The Gold Rush- version released by Sound and Vision here is with music and words, that were added by Chaplin 17 years after the ‘silent’ version was first released.