Gold Rush

Directed By Charles Chaplin
Released On 26 June,1925

Story-Line

The Gold Rush (1925) is the quintessential Chaplin/Little Tramp film, with a balance of slapstick comedy and pantomime, social satire, and emotional and dramatic moments of tenderness. It was Chaplin's own personal favorite film, that showcases the classic Tramp character (referred to as "The Little Fellow" in the re-release version) as a romantic idealist and lone gold prospector at the turn of the century, with his cane, derby, distinctive walk, tight shabby suit, and mustache. Classic scenes include the starvation scene of two cabin-marooned prospectors boiling and fastidiously eating a stewed shoe, the Tramp's cabin-mate deliriously imagining his companion as a large chicken, the teetering cabin on the edge of a cliff, and Chaplin's lonely fantasized New Year's Eve party (with the dancing dinner rolls routine) when he waits for a girl who never comes.
The Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) travels to Alaska to take part in the Alaska Gold Rush. Bad weather strands him in a remote cabin with a prospector who has found a large gold deposit (Mack Swain) and an escaped fugitive (Tom Murray), after which they part ways, with the prospector and the fugitive fighting over the prospector's claim, ending the prospector receiving a blow to the head and the fugitive falling off a cliff to his death. The Tramp eventually finds himself in a gold rush town where he ultimately decides to give up prospecting. After taking a job looking after another prospector's cabin, he falls in love with a lonely saloon girl (Georgia Hale) whom he mistakenly thinks has fallen in love with him. He soon finds himself waylaid by the prospector he met earlier, who has developed amnesia and needs the Tramp to help him find his claim by leading him to the cabin.
Particularly famous scenes include:
• The Little Tramp, starving, having to eat his boot, a prop made of licorice.
• The Little Tramp showing a dance to his imaginary dinner guests using two bread rolls stabbed with forks.
• A house teetering on the edge of a cliff, before its occupants, Chaplin and the prospector, manage to scramble out.
One sequence was altered in the 1942 re-release so that instead of the Tramp finding a note from Georgia which he mistakenly believes is for him, he actually receives the note from her. Another major alteration is the ending, in which the now-wealthy Tramp originally gave Georgia a lingering kiss; the sound version ends before this scene.