The Gold Rush (1925)

Rating: 4 Stars (out of 4)

Them Thar Hills

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy The Gold Rush on DVD

"I don't need interesting camera angles," Charlie Chaplin once said, "I am interesting." He was right; Chaplin's artistry always springs from the figure at the center of the frame rather than the arrangement of objects within the frame. Chaplin's "Little Tramp" character, with twirling cane and little moustache -- and his too-tight coat and hat and too-loose shoes and pants -- was always an outsider longing to get in. He spent every second of every film looking for the Dream: a good meal, a nice place to stay, and people to love him. His expensive, mega-production The Gold Rush was one of his purest comedy-fantasies, with some brilliant set-pieces including Charlie changing into a chicken and the "dance of the dinner rolls."

Though Image Entertainment had already released ten of Chaplin's eleven feature films on DVD, they're now all out of print. Warner Home Video has brought back four of them, with the promise of more to follow. The Chaplin Collection Vol. 1 retails for $89.92, and the individual titles -- The Gold Rush (1925), Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940) and Limelight (1952) -- retail for $29.95 each. Each package contains two discs.

The Gold Rush DVD brings us not only the original silent version, restored by Kevin Brownlow, but also Chaplin's 1940's re-release complete with his own musical score and voice-over narration. Minus intertitles, this talking version runs only 69 minutes, while the original runs 96 minutes. Strangely, the disc presents the talkie version as the "definitive" version, presented on disc one, while the preferred silent version is presented as an "extra" on disc two.

Starring: Charles Chaplin, Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman, Malcolm Waite
Written by: Charles Chaplin
Directed by: Charles Chaplin
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 96 minutes
Date: June 12, 2004