The Gold Rush (1925)
The Little Tramp joins the Klondike stampede and finds a snowbound cabin, a starving prospector who starts seeing him as a giant chicken, and a dance-hall girl who forgets she ever agreed to meet him. Chaplin spins hunger and heartbreak into set pieces — the boiled boot, the dancing bread rolls, a house teetering on a cliff.
The film Chaplin said he most wanted to be remembered for. This is the silent 1925 cut — the boot, the rolls, the cabin on the edge.
Background
Chaplin conceived The Gold Rush after seeing pictures of the Chilkoot Pass gold-rush trail, and he filmed the mountain scenes near Truckee, California, with hundreds of extras. Georgia Hale played the dance-hall girl after Lita Grey, whom Chaplin later married, was replaced. Chaplin said it was the film for which he most wanted to be remembered. The version here is the original silent release of 1925, and not the 1942 reissue with narration.
What to watch for
The two scenes that everyone remembers are the boiled boot, which Chaplin eats as though it were a fine meal, and the dance of the bread rolls, in which he makes two forks into a pair of legs. The boot was made of liquorice. The final section, with the cabin sliding to the edge of a cliff, mixes danger and slapstick perfectly. Chaplin’s Tramp is at his best here, at once poor, hopeful and dignified. If you have never seen a Chaplin film, this is a wonderful place to begin.
