The Gold Rush

Silent films are not usually my thing, as I have mentioned before on this site, as the lack of dialogue, music, and sound effects often makes it hard for me to stay invested beyond about the sixty minute mark. Interestingly enough, I had the opposite experience with The Gold Rush. The Gold Rush was noticeably sluggish at the start, dare I say even boring at times, but as the movie kept going it began to find its groove and by the end I was enjoying myself immensely.

The movie takes place during the Klondike gold rush and opens with a shot of prospectors climbing the Yukon Pass, recreating the famous photograph in a new medium with the help of hundreds of extras. An awesome technical achievement for when it was filmed, but it goes on for way too long. Afterwards, the film moves into some very dull and clunky exposition that establishes Charlie Chaplin’s Lone Prospector, the bandit Black Larsen, and Big Jim, another prospector, whose paths will all cross later in the movie. This whole section is only five or six minutes long but it feels like an eternity.

The movie begins to pick up once the Lone Prospector, Larsen, and Jim all end up at the cabin together. I was still struggling to get invested in the story, but at least it was starting to be funny. There is a particularly hilarious gag where the barrel of a gun keeps getting stuck in a character’s face even as he tries to dance out of its way again and again. However, many of the other bits in this segment are funny initially but, like the opening shot, go on for a little too long and cause the film to drag.

This slow start, between the dull exposition and the funny but overlong cabin scenes, is especially rough since later developments in the movie reveal much of the character and action of this section do not really matter. In particular, the character of Black Larsen completely disappears from the movie despite the considerable time spent establishing him as both an important character and a potential villain.

Where things really take off, however, is once the Lone Prospector leaves the cabin and makes his way to a mining town. This is where the movie hooked me. Everything gets better. It is better paced, it introduces more story and structure, it introduces some poignant melancholy amid the humor, and when it is humorous it is nothing but hits. Seriously, if I started naming all the quality bits in the second half of the movie I would just end up just describing every scene.

One thing that really struck me was how secretly influential this movie has been, especially on cartoons. While bits like the dancing dinner rolls have been referenced here and there, like on The Simpsons or in The Muppets, what really surprised me was how obvious Chaplin’s, and in particular this movie’s, influence has been on animators such as Chuck Jones. There are gags in The Gold Rush that would feel quite at home in a Looney Tunes episode.

The last thing I want to mention is the backing track. Silent movies in their day were exhibited with live piano or organ accompaniment. Since very few home viewers have a resident pianist or organist who can accompany the movie, silent films on DVD or streaming services have a soundtrack, albeit one that is simple music and nothing else. This musical track on the version I watched was awful. The music seemed like it was made of preloaded loops in Logic or Protools. It also often did not match the tone of the action creating an unintended self-seriousness to several scenes that were obviously intended to be comedic, especially in the first half. However, not every version of the film has this soundtrack so your mileage will vary. If you are interested in watching The Gold Rush, I suggest you do a little research and find a version with better musical choices.

I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that I liked one of the best comedies of the silent era, but I was. Where I have disliked some silent classics like Sunrise or Nosferatu, or have had to overlook middling storytelling to appreciate exemplary physical performing in others like in Modern Times or The General, The Gold Rush, despite its somewhat slow and awkward start, is a movie I enjoyed thoroughly and would have no qualms about recommending to others. While it may fall short of what filmmaking can do now on a technical level, if you are willing to look beyond that I think even someone skeptical about watching silent films will find plenty to enjoy.

Would Recommend: If you’ve ever wondered whether what a Looney Tunes gag would look like performed by a real, living person.

Would Not Recommend: If you just can’t get into old movies, no matter what.