Notes for The Gold Rush

Film: The Gold Rush

Year Of Release: 1925

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Notes from viewing number 1 (21.10.2021)

Rating: 10/10

- I needed something to make me laugh after De Sica broke me with Umberto D, and therefore I decided to watch a film by cinema's greatest comic genius, Charlie Chaplin.

- Visually, this may be Chaplin's best film. The landscape shots towards the beginning are stunning, and there's beautiful images thoughout the whole film. Chaplin knew how to paint an image.

- There will never be a comic like Chaplin again. His visual comedy is the best ever, and his blend of comedy is tragedy is something completely unique. This film is one of his most daring, as it focuses on starvation, isolation and death, but it's also one of his funniest.

- The shoe eating bit is one of Chaplin most tragic, funny and iconic moments ever. Love that scene.

- The scene where the Tramp's friend thinks he is a chicken is incredibly daring for 1925. How did Chaplin get away with making fun of cannibalism in 1925? Incredible.

- The sequence where the Tramp fantasizes the new year's dinner party is one of Chaplin's finest moments as a filmmaker and an actor. Not only does it include one of Chaplin's most famous bits, the bread roll dance, but it's also devastating filmmaking at it's finest.

- The scene with the tilting house stands right beside Modern Times's roller skating scene as the peak of anxiety comedy.

- I feel The Gold Rush is a film about isolation. In the first half, the Tramp is literrally isolated, with him being stuck in a cabin during a raging storm. But in the second half, he is isolated emotionally. He is lonely and searching for someone to love. In the end, the Tramp does get a happy ending, because in Chaplin movies, everybody deserves a happy ending.