Additional Features
Disc 1 has the 69-minute reissue version of the film, prepared by Chaplin in 1942, with his own musical score and narration; disc 2 has the 96-minute silent original (some Chaplin fans prefer it silent). Along with photo gallery, posters, and trailers, there's a half-hour documentary that includes Burkina Faso filmmaker Idrissa Ouedraogo's comments.
--Robert Horton
Amazon.com Essential Video
After the box-office failure of his first dramatic film,
A Woman of Paris, Charlie Chaplin brooded over his ensuing comedy. "The next film must be an epic!" he recalled in his autobiography. "The greatest!" He found inspiration, paradoxically, in stories of the backbreaking Alaskan gold rush and the cannibalistic Donner Party. These tales of tragedy and endurance provided Chaplin with a rich vein of comic possibilities. The Little Tramp finds himself in the Yukon, along with a swarm of prospectors heading over Chilkoot Pass (an amazing sight restaged by Chaplin in his opening scenes, filmed in the snowy Sierra Nevadas). When the Tramp is trapped in a mountain cabin with two other fortune hunters, Chaplin stages a veritable ballet of starvation, culminating in the cooking of a leathery boot. Back in town, the Tramp is smitten by a dance-hall girl (Georgia Hale), but it seems impossible that she could ever notice him.
The Gold Rush is one of Chaplin's simplest, loveliest features; and despite its high comedy, it never strays far from Chaplin's keen grasp of loneliness. In 1942, Chaplin reedited the film and added music and his own narration for a successful rerelease.
--Robert Horton
