The Gold Rush (1925)

Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush”

Thematic Elements: 

In 1925, America was facing an economic boom signifying an increase of the material wealth for the average citizen. In retrospect, this economic boom would deem the decade to be called “The Roaring Twenties” for its remembered celebration of the increases in wealth and the lavish lifestyles of the benefactors of this wealth increase. However, Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush would question the origins of this newfound American lifestyle and all those who would be riding this prosperity train further and further away from their common fellow citizens. 

The Gold Rush takes place in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush of Alaska. America had been experiencing a gold rush since 1848 when thousands would travel across the western lands of the continent to mine and search for golds and other riches, hoping to catch hold of the American dream they were promised. This promise is the entire foundation for that which America is founded on – a promise of freedom to travel the vast landscapes, find your own fortunes, and build your own individual paradise. Closing out the 19th century however, prospectors had infiltrated these western locations and drained the land of its golden treasure, leaving a push north into Canada and Alaska to infiltrate in the hopes of prosperity. America was coming to the end of its promise – all that had been buried and hidden beneath the surface of its affluent lands had been collected upon by a select handful who were now building their newly established class higher and higher, and further and further away from those who had lost in this race for wealth and prosperity. 

The film starts with the Chaplin as the Tramp who comes to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush to search for gold. After being caught in a blizzard, he finds the cabin of a renegade named Black Larsen. Black Larsen rejects the Tramp’s entrances, thrusting him back to the cold fate of the wilderness until the Tramp is backed by Big Jim McKay, who also seeks shelter. After a battle between Big Jim and Black Larsen, Big Jim and the Tramp are allowed to stay in the shelter, while Black Larsen ventures out to search for food. The quest for riches and the risk involved for survival create an atmosphere of animosity between the prospectors. Greed and the limited allocation of resources makes a competitor of everyone. 

At one point in the film, the Tramp and Big Jim are so hungry that Big Jim fantasizes that the Tramp is a chicken, who he then chases around the room in a delirium. In another scene, the Tramp takes off one of his shoes, splits it into two pieces and serves it to himself and Big Jim, who then begin to eat it. Their state of hunger is so extreme that they cannot help but consider cannibalism and eating shoes as a method for survival. This notion lends itself to the aspect of their quest for wealth – wherein those who are without the attainability of money also must become desperate as a means for survival. As the characters are bracing the storm waiting for the next opportunity to satiate their extreme starvation – it also mirrors the desperation of those who must wait out the economic storm keeping them from satisfying their basic human needs. Chaplin portrays this parallel to suggest that the steepening of the disparity between means creates an impoverished society full of starving and desperate people. The value of necessity placed on material wealth by society creates an inherent need of it for survival – thereby creating a displacement from survival to those without those valued means.

After the storm, the two depart the cabin, the Tramp heads into town; Big Jim to search for a hidden mine. Big Jim finds Black Larsen in possession of valuables from his hidden mine to which the two begin to scuffle. Black Larsen knocks Big Jim over the head with his shovel and flees the scene with the gold, only to be swept away in an avalanche. This shows another interesting prospect of the quest for gold: the inherent selfish possession of its riches. 

The Tramps arrives at a mushroom town along the gold trail and enters a dance hall. The dance hall is full of prospectors in coats and women seemingly wearing affluent garment. The black and white cinematography of the film displays the dresses some of the women are wearing as having a golden shine. The same golden color of the gold that the Tramp has been trying to get his hands on. Where the Tramp must brace the harsh terrain, survive the weather, stay away from dangerous contenders, and starve to get his hands on this substance, others seem to wear it frivolously with a sense of ignorance and abandon. This is where the gap between those who have and those who have not comes into focus. Those who have live in such privilege and gaiety that the woes and the suffering of the have-nots are completely blind to them, or rather they look down upon it – as many ridicules the Tramp through his arrival. The apparent disparity between the allocation of resources and wealth seems to create a sense of otherness, one in which creates a separate class of people who take their security and affluence for granted and look down on those who do not share in this affluence. 

Georgia, a dance hall girl becomes annoyed at her male friend and uses the opportunity to dance with “the most deplorable looking tramp in the dance hall” to as a method of mockery. The Tramp, however, does not notice this mockery and begins to fall for this woman who seems enamored with him. Her and her friends tells the Tramp that they will have dinner with him on New Year’s Eve, appearing to be tricking him as they laugh together. The Tramp sets the dinner and awaits their arrival on the day, only to be let down by their lack of appearance. The Tramp, in a state of loneliness envisions them showing up as he performs for him. This scene appears to reconcile the Tramp’s behavior throughout the film – his deep-seated loneliness. The Tramp’s searching throughout the film is nothing more than him searching to fill the void of loneliness and isolation – creating a sense of tragedy for this poverty-stricken tramp. This sense of loneliness and isolation points to the effects created by this apparent separation between the classes that this inflow of wealth the money is producing. Even though the setting of the film is 1989, the year the film was released – 1925 – had reached its high point of this new philosophy of the American economic dream and the classes could not be farther apart. Chaplin uses The Gold Rush to illustrate the negative effects of this continued divide between the rich and the poor classes and how all this wealth can cause such a disparity both in its economics and in its standards of living. 

It is apparent that Georgia begins to feel bad about her treating of the Tramp. After she arrived late to his dinner to find he had left, she visually displays of sense of regret and throughout the rest of the film, she notices people less fortunate than her throughout her life. This notion of empathy that has struck Georgia gives the film a sense of hope – hope of changing the perspective of those at the top of the economic structure to begin to realize their place in society and how their abundance is negatively affecting their fellow man. 

The film ends with Big Jim needing the Tramp to take him back to the cabin so he can once again find his hidden mine. Once they do, the two become rich and the Tramp finds Georgia on a cruise ship as the two embrace. The Tramp was able to get a happy ending he desired, economic security and a companion to combat his loneliness. However, the means for attaining this satisfying end was not by a sheer power of the will, but rather by sheer chance of luck and happenstance. The terrible things the Tramp had to endure paints the picture of the hardships those in poverty are accustomed to and the sudden fortuitous ending shows just how arbitrary the means of acquiring a better life are. Chaplin is able to paint an image of just what money and the chase for wealth can do to a person and a society and just how those who are at the top might not have any cadence for their position in their own hierarchy. The Gold Rush illustrates the human nature and circumstances surrounding the quest for material wealth, and its effects on the psychology of a society and the dangers of leaving those to the frozen cold of poverty.  

Camerawork: 

Motif: Chaplin uses snow as a continued motif throughout the film as to suggest the cold and harsh conditions he has found himself in. These cold and harsh conditions are taken as literal as the snow and snowstorms physically affect the Tramp and his quest, but it also mirrors the harshness of his life without the gold and wealth he seeks. He is constantly at odds with his environment and is constantly under the oppression of this invisible enemy. The motif of snow gets used at one point in the story when the women that the Tramp met in the dancehall are walking through the snow-covered terrain the next day and begin to play with the snow by throwing snowballs at each other. Where once the snow was an oppressor against the survival and well-being of the poor Tramp, the snow is now used frivolously and carefree with the well-to-do women who have means. Chaplin uses the juxtaposition between these two uses of the snow to illustrate the distance of lifestyle between the two classes of people and to illustrate the ignorance and carefree nature of those who don’t understand the hardships being faced by someone in a position under them in the social economic hierarchy.

Tone: Chaplin uses tone in an interesting way during a scene in which the women from the bar incidentally stop by at the cabin that the Tramp is housekeeping for. As then enter, they are greeted by the Tramp who eagerly welcomes them in. He leaves for a moment and when he does, they uncover a picture Georgia under his pillow. When the Tramp arrives back in the cabin, the camera cuts to a wide shot of everyone in the cabin as the women sit uncomfortably as the Tramp prepares a fire. The moment the women first enter being greeted by the Tramp and the moment the Tramp returns into the cabin are set by two entirely different and opposite tones. The first moment seems to present warmth and welcome, a cheerful and hopeful moment felt by the viewer as there seems to be company to satiate the Tramp’s intense loneliness. However, this moment drops from being hopeful to tragic in the second moment. Now, the ladies are made as aware of the Tramp’s loneliness as the viewer is, now making the scene more tragic instilling a greater sense of pity. The viewer cannot help but be uncomforted by the ladies’ awareness of this information as it makes the Tramp more tragic and sadder in their eyes. This total reversal in tone is a brilliant use of filmmaking technique by Chaplin to create a totally different perspective on a scene involving the same characters.

Framing: After Georgia and her friends leave the Tramp’s cabin promising him to come back for a New Year’s Eve dinner, they are seen huddling together outside and laughing, knowing that they will not return. The camera then cuts to a shot of the tramp waving goodbye to them as he stands in the doorway. The Tramp standing in the doorway as the he and the frame of the doorway appear on the right side of the screen as the rest of the cabin wall covers the rest of the frame. This unique framing illustrates to the viewer that the Tramp is being framed by these women, just as he is being framed in the tight rectangle of the doorway by the camera. The visual cue is meant to undercut the Tramp’s apparent joy of his anticipation of their return. The Tramp is once again painted in tragic and sad circumstances to resemble his enate tragic story.

Best Shot: 

The best shot of the film comes when the Tramp enters the dancehall. He had just left the cold and desolate landscape of the harsh wilderness and the starvation he felt with Big Jim in the empty cabin and enters a far warmer and joyous atmosphere. The camera is showing the vastness of the wide room filled with jubilant people in celebration. This directly contrasts with the single image of the raggedy Tramp with only one shoe and the other wrapped in a sack because of the effects of his starvation. This is the most visually thematic moment of the film in which Chaplin is illustrating the vast disparity between the harsh and cold conditions and situations the viewer has seen the Tramp accustomed to versus this warm and joyous environment that the Tramp has now entered and feels disconnected from. As he stands alone in view of this celebration, Chaplin paints the image of a man of no means disconnected from his society by the satiation of material wealth that so many chase – ultimately creating a system of disparate classes and individuals leaving behind their fellow man in a pursuit of gold and money powered by their greed and ultimately their needing for security and safety.