Silent movies - The Gold Rush

We don't have weather quite that extreme here right now, but it is still winter and the beginning of the year, so I brought you a film today which is set in the snow of the Klondike region and has a famous New Year's Eve dinner scene. It's of course Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush from 1925. Or 1942? Let's see.

Actually I watched two versions for this post both of which I hadn't known before.
The original from 1925 is longer and silent with intertitles, the recut from 1942 has some changes and instead of intertitles there is a musical score and a narration done by Chaplin himself.

As usual, I'll start with the plot (and spoilers).

Along with hundreds of others, the Lone Prospector (Chaplin's Little Tramp character) makes his way to the Klondike to find gold.

Surprised by a blizzard, he ends up in the cabin of Black Larsen, a wanted criminal, and soon they get joined by Big Jim, another prospector who has just found a big gold deposit. Larsen tries to get rid of them in vain.

When they run out of food and draw cards to determine who has to go out in the blizzard to find some, Black Larsen loses. Out there, he comes across the tent of two policemen looking for him and kills them.
Meanwhile, the little fellow and Big Jim go crazy with hunger. They eat one of the little fellow's shoes, but Big Jim gets delirious and thinks his friend is a chicken. Just in time a bear marches in and they have enough to eat.

Licorice and hard candy, just in
case you wondered like me 😉

When the blizzard is over, they part ways. The little fellow heads to the next gold boom town, Big Jim to his claim. There, however, Black Larsen, is waiting. He strikes Jim down with a shovel and makes off with part of the gold, but falls to his death in an avalanche.

In the town's dance hall, the little fellow falls in love with Georgia. In order to annoy Jack who makes aggressive advances towards her, Georgia asks the little fellow for a dance.

When they happen to meet again at a cabin nearby which he's watching for the owner, Georgia flirts with the little fellow and then invites herself and her friends for dinner on New Year's Eve.

The little fellow shovels snow to get the money for the dinner. He decorates everything nicely and falls asleep waiting for the ladies dreaming about the fun and laughter when he does his bread roll dance for them.

When he wakes up all alone, however, he goes to the dance hall where everyone is celebrating. Disappointed, he goes for a walk in the snow, so when Georgia comes to the cabin with Jack after remembering the invitation, he's not there.

Meanwhile, Big Jim has made it to town. Unfortunately, he doesn't remember the location of his mountain of gold after Black Larsen hit him with the shovel. So when he sees the little fellow at the dance hall, he drags him off to help him.
They find the cabin, but during the night it slides downhill in another blizzard and after half of it ends up hanging over a cliff, it's rocking dangerously.

They make it out just in time before the cabin falls into the depth.

As luck would have it, though, Jim's gold deposit is in that spot and they both end up as millionaires.
When they take a ship back home, reporters ask the little fellow for a picture in his old prospector clothes. Falling down some stairs because the photographer tells him to step back, he lands right next to Georgia who's also on the way back, looking quite disillusioned. She thinks he's a stowaway and tries to hide him. Her surprise and joy is big when not only the captain announces him to be a multi-millionaire, but also when the little fellow tells the reporter she's his bride.

Let's get to the plot differences first.

In the 1925 original, Georgia refuses Jack's kiss after they find the cabin empty but decorated, but later writes him a letter apologizing and telling him she loves him. Jack shows the letter to the others at his table laughing at it, then he has the letter taken to the little fellow just to spite Georgia. So when the little fellow tells Georgia he got her note, kisses her hand and promises her to make good before being dragged away by Big Jim, she is clearly confused what's going on. Only when she is afraid for him on the ship because she thinks he'll be put into irons, you can tell she has really feelings for him.

In the 1942 version, however, the note goes directly to the little fellow and only says that she wants to apologize and explain about New Year's Eve and there isn't a mention of a relationship between Jack and her.

The ending is also a bit different, in the original you see the little fellow and Georgia in a long kiss, in the recut they just climb the stairs arm in arm.

I think the first version adds a little more drama and the note seems to be giving the little fellow the motivation to go back to look for gold in order to be worthy of Georgia.
The note in the recut is a bit lukewarm and doesn't really say that much about Georgia's feelings towards him, so that makes his reaction to it look rather over the top.

To be honest, the romance is what I'm struggling with in this film, anyway. Jack is a bully and I don't understand why Georgia suddenly changes her mind about him (in the first version) and then changes her mind again, this time about the little fellow. At least she's not after his money when she tries to help him on the ship, but does she really know what she wants?
On the other hand, a happy ending usually makes me happy as well, and in this one Chaplin's Little Tramp gets a really happy one, his lady and a load of money on top.

"The Gold Rush" was Chaplin's own favorite and a critical and commercial success. It was inspired by pictures of the Klondike Gold Rush and a book about the Donner Party.
Now you may wonder what on earth could be funny about these two historical events, but Chaplin always managed to find humor in tragedy.
The film didn't make me laugh out loud, though, because I always felt that tragedy around the corner.
Take the Thanksgiving dinner with the shoe, for example. I enjoyed the way the little fellow celebrated the presentation of the "meal", but thinking about this being inspired by real events was also gruesome.

I also couldn't help wondering how cold it must have been for those dance hall girls in their beautiful but rather flimsy looking dresses, and seeing the little fellow in his usual outfit walking through the snow was funny, but also made me shiver (you may remember that I wondered about heating when I saw the huge castle in Doug Fairbanks's Robin Hood, too 😂). I just hate snow (except in pictures of lovely winter landscapes).
Of course, I was aware that those were studio scenes, but I think that rather speaks for Chaplin's talent at evoking the feeling of a harsh Klondike winter.
There were also some amazing effects, such as the rocking cabin or Black Larsen's death scene.

It's really no surprise that the movie has received such high praise and still does.
Of course, people are divided about the two versions, though.
If I had to choose, I'd take the 1925 version, but with the score of 1942. I didn't mind the narration as such, but I think Chaplin went a bit overboard with the pathos and he could have said less (maybe I'm really getting used to title cards?).

Why is there a recut, anyway?
Chaplin wanted to revive the film - as mentioned, it was his favorite - but knew that after talkies had been around for more than a decade now he couldn't just present the old version the way it was. So he tweaked and rearranged and modernized and added music and narration.
The 1925 version had entered the public domain in the USA because the copyright hadn't been renewed, but in the end it went into the trash. Only in 1993, film historians Kevin Brownlow and David Gill were appointed by Chaplin's heirs to reconstruct and restore it from available sources.

For people who shy away from completely silent movies, however, I think, the recut is a great choice. I know I have waited far too long myself, but I believe "The Gold Rush" is worth a watch by everyone who's interested in classic movies at all.

P.S. I'll deduct a point for bringing in a dog that suddenly disappears. That's too much tragedy for me.


Sources:

1. Fritzi Kramer: The Gold Rush (1925) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, July 5, 2015
2. Jeffrey Vance: The Gold Rush. On: San Francisco Silent Film Festival, presented at the "Little Tramp at 100" event January 2014