Review of The Gold Rush (58)

Plot
The Tramp ventures to the Alaskan frontier in search of gold and to make his fortune. Instead, he gets mixed up with some burly characters and falls in love with the beautiful Georgia.

Jason's Thoughts
The Gold Rush is the second silent film on the 100 Years 100 Movies list to feature Charlie Chaplin and his Tramp character, the other being Modern Times.  Although Modern Times was a good movie, it was easy for me to see why The Gold Rush was ranked higher than it.

My big gripe with Modern Times was the fact that it seemed like a series of loosely related skits that didn't seem to flow together.  I was a little worried that the same would happen with The Gold Rush, especially considering that it came out earlier, but I was relieved to see that it had an actual story behind all of the acting that was charming and funny.

Even without dialog there were many great scenes in this movie.  A few examples that come to mind are the classic dinner roll dance and the Tramp dining on a boiled shoe and shoelaces.  A hunger induced scene in which the Tramp's partner thinks he sees him as a big chicken walking around the cabin has also been parodied several times in cartoons and seems to have gotten its start in this film.

A lot of humor in older movies seems to be lost in time, but The Gold Rush hasn't lost a step and is still funny today.  If you haven't seen any silent films before, The Gold Rush would be a good place to start.

Crystal's Thoughts
These old silent movies simply keep surprising me as The Gold Rush was a fun, playful movie with good humor as well as a plot.  I felt the writing, though no lines by the actors were ever spoken, left the story woven together nicely.  The acting too was amazing as each scene was laid out in a manner that you understood what was happening and were left with a few good laughs too.

The movie went quickly, and while it was one of the shorter movies we’ve watched, I’m beginning to understand that the silent movies are on the shorter side as without words, the imagination is left to play out the film.  Almost every viewer will have the same outcome in the end, but throughout the movie, you are able to think for the characters.  I feel that adds a nice complexity to it.  And if you just want to watch to watch and not be drawn in using too much imagination, you can too as The Gold Rush maps itself out in a way that at the closing credits you are left with a smile on your face, perhaps a laugh even, and say, “that was pretty good.”

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