Dan Navarro's Movie Reviews

The Gold Rush was an enormously successful comedy by Charles Chaplin at the peak of his powers. A lone prospector in the Yukon meets and bonds with another prospector, finds true love with a dance hall girl (Georgia Hale) and, after several adventures, strikes it rich. Two scenes stand out: The Thanksgiving dinner at which snowbound Charlie and his friend (Mack Swain) are forced to eat a boiled shoe; and the riotous, and justly famous, scene where the two men are stranded in a cabin that is dangling on the edge of a precipice.

There's a lively debate among scholars of silent comedies as to which film is Chaplin's "masterpiece"—The Gold Rush or City Lights (1931)? Both films have been so identified; indeed, although City Lights seems to command slightly more support in this regard, Charles Chaplin himself said, "The Gold Rush is the film I would like to be remembered for."

Chaplin thought enough of The Gold Rush to re-release it in the sound era, in 1942, with a lush musical score (composed by Chaplin) and with the star/director himself supplying voice-over narration. The re-release was a hit with audiences, though some silent film buffs were still nostalgic for the 1925 version. The succeeding years have made it clear why that is so.

In the 1970s, when the 1925 version fell into public domain, prints of it were screened in revival theaters and at retrospective screenings at colleges and museums. Revisiting the original version proves that Chaplin made major changes in it when he re-launched it as a sound film in 1942.

In The Gold Rush there's a poignant scene where the Chaplin character—the Little Prospector—goes to great lengths to prepare a New Year's Eve dinner in his little cabin in the Yukon, for Georgia and her girl friends. But the girls party the night away in the dance hall, and never show up for the little prospector's dinner. The following morning, saddened, he walks into the dance hall just as Georgia, oblivious to him, is sending a handwritten love note to the local ladies' man, Jack (Malcolm Waite). The callous Jack reads it and, wishing to humiliate Georgia, has a waiter deliver the note to the little prospector and make him think that it is he, not Jack, who is the object of the lady's affection. Cruel? You bet. But of such conflicts comes good theater.

Fast-forward to 1942 and the sound version of the film. Again, the girls fail to show up for Charlie's meticulously planned New Year's Eve dinner. Again, he sadly saunters into the dance hall the following morning. And again, Georgia is preparing a handwritten note for delivery. But for whom? This time, Chaplin the director has us believe Georgia is sending the note to Charlie, to apologize for missing his dinner. Gone is the tension of the preceding version, and the scene is weaker for that.

The movie's final scene, gloriously high-spirited in the original, is watered down in the sound version. By now the little prospector and his partner have struck it rich, they are millionaires, and they're headed back to the United States on a luxury ship—albeit one which also carries impoverished passengers in the steerage section. By chance, Charlie (in first class) and Georgia (in steerage) meet on the ship, and he makes arrangements to have her quarters upgraded.

Now the two versions part company. In the 1925 The Gold Rush, a news photographer asks the happy couple to pose together for a picture; and, while they pose, Charlie and Georgia impulsively share a kiss. The photographer is not amused. An intertitle tells us his remark: "Oh, you've spoilt the picture!" Unconcernedly, Charlie and Georgia kiss again. Fade out.

In Chaplin's 1942 sound version, the film fades out right after Charlie and Georgia meet on the ship and start to ascend the stairs to the first-class deck. There's no photographer to snap their picture, no kiss, no expectations of happy years to come. Just a quick fade-out, as if Chaplin is telling us: It'll never last. None of my marriages do.

It's been suggested, by Walter Kerr and others, that the photographer's comment, "Oh, now you've spoilt the picture!" was Chaplin's way of saying that the film should not end that way. If so, he certainly did jettison that ending with his 1942 sound version. But time—and the new availability of the 1925 original—have conspired to give the moviegoing community the final word.