The following notes on The Gold Rush were written by Lance St. Laurent, PhD candidate in the Department of Communication Arts at UW–Madison. A new 4K restoration of the original 1925 release version will screen at 7 p.m. on Saturday, November 1 in the Cinematheque’s regular venue, 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Ave. Admission is free!
By Lance St. Laurent
In Andrew Sarris’s landmark book The American Cinema, one of the key works to bring the auteur theory into American film discourse, the first filmmaker examined—and the first in Sarris’s category of “Pantheon Directors”—is Charlie Chaplin. For comedy scholar Gerald Mast, Chaplin was nothing short of “the greatest film artist in motion-picture history” and “to the movies what Shakespeare is to drama.” Chaplin’s life and extensive body of work have been the subject of countless critical appreciations, historical examinations, documentaries, and, in 1992, a star-studded Hollywood biopic. He is the singular figure most associated with silent comedy—and, indeed, Hollywood film’s silent era more generally. Chaplin remains a canonical icon both behind the camera and, as his indelible creation The Little Tramp, in front of it. As we work our way through the 2020s, we also reach the centennial of Chaplin’s jump from shorts to feature filmmaking. His first feature, The Kid, celebrated 100 years in 2021. His follow-up, the under-seen and Tramp-less melodrama A Woman of Paris, turned 100 in 2023. And this year, we commemorate a century of one of Chaplin’s most celebrated works, the ambitious and heartwarming “dramatic comedy” The Gold Rush. While The Gold Rush’s place in the canon is now firmly secured, both its production and subsequent release history were fraught with complications that speak to Chaplin’s mercurial nature as both an artist and a human being.
Coming off the box office disappointment of A Woman of Paris, Chaplin retreated to familiar territory—a comedy starring the Tramp—but also set his sights high, stating “This next film must be an epic!” Inspired by pictures of the Klondike Gold Rush and the cannibalistic survival story of the Donner Party (yes, really), Chaplin envisioned a project that wrung his trademark blend of comedy and pathos from a story of strife and desperation far beyond the scope of any he had previously made. Set against the unforgiving Alaskan landscape, The Gold Rush follows Chaplin’s Tramp, here cast as “The Lone Prospector,” in his struggles to find riches among the mountains—and find love amongst a town that treats him as an unwashed vagabond. The running time of the film was Chaplin’s longest to date, and its historical setting, location shooting, numerous extras, and extensive special effects sequences made the production drag on for nearly a year and a half. The shoot also proved to be emotionally fraught for the director. Chaplin seduced his original leading lady, the teenaged Lita Grey, resulting in a pregnancy and a hasty, unhappy marriage which forced recasting six months into shooting. As his marriage to Grey strained behind the scenes, the womanizing Chaplin was also rumored to have started another affair with his new leading lady, the former beauty queen Georgia Hale.
Despite the dramatic production, the resulting film was an immediate smash hit. Though box office records for the period are spotty, Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance claims the film was one of the highest grossing of the entire silent era, and its success reportedly netted its director a $2 million payday. Chaplin himself was reportedly so proud that he declared that it was the film for which he wanted to be remembered. The Gold Rush was a triumph and almost instantly canonized as a classic. However, this was not the end of its story.
At the end of the 1920s, Hollywood introduced synchronized sound, with the industry and audiences adapting to the new technology in a few short years. By the 1930s, silent films were considered passé and old-fashioned, and there was little demand for them among audiences. Chaplin was famously one of the last holdouts among the silent comedians. His 1936 film Modern Times was a last stand for silent cinema, a final bow for The Tramp that nonetheless incorporated music, sound effects, and in a climactic scene, a nonsense song sung by the previously mute icon. By 1940, Chaplin saw the writing on the wall and produced his first proper talkie The Great Dictator. The silent master now spoke and used his voice accordingly, ending the film on an extended and impassioned plea for humanity in a world beset by tyranny and cruelty.
Chaplin’s embrace of sound also led him to revisit one of his most beloved films: in 1942, he released an updated version of The Gold Rush. For this version, Chaplin not only added orchestral music, sound effects, and extensive narration (spoken by Chaplin himself), but he also re-edited the film, using alternate takes for some scenes and cutting certain scenes (including the final shot of the film) entirely. This reworked version was also acclaimed and successful upon release, even earning two Oscar nominations for its score and sound recording. However, Chaplin’s belief that the 1942 version represented the definitive cut of the film led him to all but abandon the original 1925 classic. Chaplin made no efforts to preserve this original cut, actively working to erase its existence: when silent era enthusiasts pirated their own print (exploiting Chaplin’s own failure to renew the copyright in the United States), Chaplin took them to court overseas. Chaplin’s efforts were successful, and for decades, his revised version was the only one available in legal circulation. It was not until the 1990s that restoration efforts, spearheaded by film historians David Gill and Kevin Brownlow with the support of the Chaplin estate, were undertaken to revive Chaplin’s original vision.
For 30 years, Gill and Brownlow’s newly assembled negative, cobbled together from a variety of archival sources, has served as the basis for further refinement as technology has improved and more sources have been unearthed, first for an HD release in 2012 and now for a full 4K restoration to celebrate 100 years of Chaplin’s comic odyssey. While the 1942 film may have been Chaplin’s preferred version and is a treasure in its own right, the tireless work of historians, archivists, and restoration technicians—along with the good sense of Chaplin’s current rights holders—have made sure that cinephiles and comedy lovers can now experience one of The Little Tramp’s finest hours in its purest form, and, much like audiences a century ago, marvel at its invention, its ambition, its hilarity, and its heart.