#29. The Gold Rush
- Year: 1925
- Country: USA
- Production: Charles Chaplin, 72m B&W Silent
- Director: Charles Chaplin
- Producer: Charles Chaplin
- Screenplay: Charles Chaplin
- Photography: Roland Totheroh
- Cast: Charles Chaplin, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman, Malcolm Waite, Georgia Hale
- Blog Club Rating: 8.8/10
Abridged Book Description[]
The Gold Rush affirmed Charles Chaplin's belief that tragedy and comedy are never far apart... The familiar Little Tramp becomes a gold prospector, joining the mass of brave optimists to face all the hazards of cold, starvation, solitude, and the occasional incursion of a grizzly bear. The film was in every respect the most elaborate undertaking of Chaplin's career. For two weeks the unit shot on location at Truckee in the snow country of the Sierra Nevada... For the main shooting the unit returned to the Hollywood studio, where a remarkably convincing miniature mountain range was created out of timber, chicken wire, burlap plaster, salt, and flour. In addition, the studio technicians devised exquisite models to produce the special effects which Chaplin required, like the miners' hut, which is blown by the tempest to teeter on the edge of a precipice, for one of cinema's most sustained sequences of comic suspense... Today, The Gold Rush appears as one of Chaplin's most perfectly accomplished films. Though his affections for his own work changed over time, to the end of his life he would frequently declare that this film was the one by which he would most wish to be remembered.