The Gold Rush

The Gold Rush (1925) is set during the Klondike gold rush. The Tramp goes prospecting, is trapped in a cabin by a blizzard, and cooks and eats his boot out of hunger. Then he falls for a woman in a dance hall, and the second half turns on that hopeless love. The boot scene and the dance of the bread rolls are among the most copied sequences in film history. Chaplin said plainly at the time of release that this was the film he wanted to be remembered for. A biographer quotes him saying the same thing: this is the picture he wanted to be remembered by. In 1942 he reworked it, adding a score, recording his own voice as narrator, and tightening the edit. That version was nominated for Oscars in music and sound recording. A silent film received a sound nomination seventeen years later. It took 2.15 million dollars in the United States and Canada and around four million worldwide, making it the fifth highest grossing silent film ever made. It runs 95 minutes. Good for: silent comedy, Chaplin, and classical cinema. Less good for: two versions are in circulation and which one you see changes the experience; the narration in the 1942 cut strikes some viewers as intrusive. The romantic thread is weaker than the comedy, and the pace is slow by current habits.