The Gold Rush (1925)

The longer review

The Tramp goes north to the Klondike to look for gold, gets lost in a blizzard and ends up sheltering in a cabin with a huge, hungry prospector named Big Jim (Mack Swain) and a wanted man. That setup, two starving men snowed in together, produces the most famous scenes in the film.

The first is Thanksgiving dinner. With nothing left to eat, the Tramp boils one of his boots and serves it up with great ceremony: he carves the sole, twirls the laces like spaghetti and sucks the nails like little bones. Chaplin plays it completely straight, and that is why it's funny. Later, Big Jim becomes so delirious with hunger that he sees the Tramp as a giant chicken, a gag that's sillier and still gets a laugh.

The second half moves to a boomtown, where the Tramp falls for a dance hall girl named Georgia, played by Georgia Hale. This is the weaker strand. The romance is thin and Georgia is more an idea than a character. But it contains the "dance of the rolls", in which the Tramp spears two bread rolls with forks and makes them do a little routine on the table. It lasts less than a minute and it's pure charm.

The finale returns to the cabin, which a storm has blown to the edge of a cliff. As the two men move around inside, the cabin tips back and forth, and each shift is timed to give you a jolt. It's a model suspense sequence played for laughs.

Before you watch

The original 1925 version is in the US public domain. Chaplin reissued the film in 1942 with narration and a new score, and cut some scenes; that version is still under copyright. If a copy has Chaplin's voice on it, it's the 1942 reissue.