Gold Rush (1925)

Directed by Charles Chaplin. Chaplin, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman, Malcolm Waite, Georgia Hale. United Artists (1925/1942).

From a National Catholic Register review

By Steven D. Greydanus

City Lights might be Chaplin’s most exquisite achievement, but he never made a funnier or more beloved film than his own personal favorite, Gold Rush.

There are two editions of the film: the silent 1925 original, released at the height of Chaplin’s career, and Chaplin’s 1942 quasi-sound version, which replaces the intertitles with humorous documentary-like narration by Chaplin himself and includes a new Chaplin soundtrack.

In either version, the film is a masterpiece; purists understandably prefer the original, but the sound version has its charms, and is even more accessible to the youngest viewers. (Both versions are available in the two-disc DVD edition.)

The high-concept story sends Chaplin’s Little Tramp to the Klondike in search of gold. Almost uniquely in the Chaplin canon, Gold Rush allows the Tramp the possibility of a truly happy ending, for once successful both in love and money. First, though, he must brave bears, fugitives, starvation, and of course heartbreak.

In classic gags, the starving Tramp boils and eats one of his own black boots, and a fellow prospector, delirious from hunger, hallucinates the Tramp as a giant chicken. The classic dinner-roll dance is another highlight.

Slapstick violence and menace.