2008 Woodie Awards
Movie Preview: "The Gold Rush"
Tramp discovers love in Alaska
By: Anthony Barsanti
Issue date: 8/31/06 Section: Culture
- Page 1 of 1
There are few luminaries in the film world today that are as vastly misunderstood as was the enormously talented and equally conflicted Charles Spencer Chaplin, who lived from 1889 to 1977.
His talents were recognized and attuned at an early age, by vaudevillian parents and most of England as he traveled with a stage company, eventually arriving in the United States where he wished to stay. After producer Mack Sennett saw his act, Chaplin was on his way to Hollywood. Two years later, Chaplin produced his first film, "Making a Living," in 1914.
Then after his first 70 some odd films, low-budgets including "The Immigrant" in 1917 and "The Kid" in 1921, Chaplin hit it big. The wildly successful romantic comedy, "The Gold Rush," a fairly straightforward story of a pinched lone prospector following the tales of unprecedented wealth coming from the Klondike circa 1898, takes his Little Tramp character all the way to Alaska.
Incidentally, his heroic journey ends up representing his equally clueless search for true love, running into blizzards and thuggish fellow gold diggers
along the way.
Antics of shoe-eating and log cabins teetering over the abyss aside, the film is very well put together for its time and pushes Chaplin's oeuvre to the next level. Combining his naturally unrivaled slapstick routines with his sentimentalities toward the politically and/or economically abandoned, he encapsulates the time period for our later generations to recognize on a similar level.
One priceless scene has Chaplin and his fellow prospector left without rations in their cabin during a snowstorm. Eventually they begin imagining each other as life-size cooked chickens and running after each other with axes. Chaplin was able to poke fun at even the most dire of situations.
Timely as it was - even in remote Alaska the jazz age was in full swing - the film foreshadows the troubled times ahead brought on by the
Great Depression.
Common people, desperate enough to travel to the furthest reaches of civilization, were ever hopeful of finding something extraordinary that would separate them from the masses.
The film plays in the Winifred Moore Auditorium at 8 p.m. Sept. 1 through 3. at the Webster University Film Series with a special matinee showing at 1 p.m. Sept 1. It runs as a part of the continuing Charlie Chaplin Film Festival.
On Sept. 1, Gerry Mandel will host the screening of the short "Easy Street" before "The Gold Rush." The festival continues the following weekend, Sept. 8 through 10, with the 1928 "The Circus" and runs through Oct. 15.
His talents were recognized and attuned at an early age, by vaudevillian parents and most of England as he traveled with a stage company, eventually arriving in the United States where he wished to stay. After producer Mack Sennett saw his act, Chaplin was on his way to Hollywood. Two years later, Chaplin produced his first film, "Making a Living," in 1914.
Then after his first 70 some odd films, low-budgets including "The Immigrant" in 1917 and "The Kid" in 1921, Chaplin hit it big. The wildly successful romantic comedy, "The Gold Rush," a fairly straightforward story of a pinched lone prospector following the tales of unprecedented wealth coming from the Klondike circa 1898, takes his Little Tramp character all the way to Alaska.
Incidentally, his heroic journey ends up representing his equally clueless search for true love, running into blizzards and thuggish fellow gold diggers
along the way.
Antics of shoe-eating and log cabins teetering over the abyss aside, the film is very well put together for its time and pushes Chaplin's oeuvre to the next level. Combining his naturally unrivaled slapstick routines with his sentimentalities toward the politically and/or economically abandoned, he encapsulates the time period for our later generations to recognize on a similar level.
One priceless scene has Chaplin and his fellow prospector left without rations in their cabin during a snowstorm. Eventually they begin imagining each other as life-size cooked chickens and running after each other with axes. Chaplin was able to poke fun at even the most dire of situations.
Timely as it was - even in remote Alaska the jazz age was in full swing - the film foreshadows the troubled times ahead brought on by the
Great Depression.
Common people, desperate enough to travel to the furthest reaches of civilization, were ever hopeful of finding something extraordinary that would separate them from the masses.
The film plays in the Winifred Moore Auditorium at 8 p.m. Sept. 1 through 3. at the Webster University Film Series with a special matinee showing at 1 p.m. Sept 1. It runs as a part of the continuing Charlie Chaplin Film Festival.
On Sept. 1, Gerry Mandel will host the screening of the short "Easy Street" before "The Gold Rush." The festival continues the following weekend, Sept. 8 through 10, with the 1928 "The Circus" and runs through Oct. 15.
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