Review of The Gold Rush (1925) by Nick O — 17 Jun 2011

Comedy is rarely written in the endgame. In fact, it usually only ever comes at all for final clearance of thumb-suckers scared shitless to leave the theater. It's what hits an existential vein in Charlie Chaplin's "The Gold Rush". As if written in the stars, the melancholy bursts like a line of oil, and still makes time to wave away sorrows by deign of air on an empty night. Through a fantasia of mortal imagery, Chaplin builds a hopeless romantic of every slapstick buff. In behavior Billy Wilder would later follow, "The Gold Rush" turns larger than life with help of humorous import. Chaplin stays in regular bust, and the movie seems to catch him for all the better.

Yet it hardly sticks to a center. Chaplin plays a nameless prospector midst the 1898 Yukon gold collective, but journeys mostly in the throes of a gorgeous city slicker named Georgia (Georgia Hale), and the tricks she and friends play on the Little Tramp. Still, Charlie fights for her, the likes of boyfriend Black Larson (Tom Murray) coming into play. Here, "The Gold Rush" seems to split. Lost between the sharp riches of mountain explorer Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain) and croon for Georgia, the film finds magic in both the momentary and transcendent. Each trip to the dance hall, where Charlie first meets his crush, there's the shape of a soul in every savory line of dialouge that would hurt the innocence of the atmosphere if all the points didn't align so well. So Georgia's infliction, positive and negative, as well as Larson's vapidness pay due to the same reality. Chaplin's bag of mischief breaks only in his own haunted realization. It'd happen, too, if the world weren't full of different corners.