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Everyone (and I mean everyone) has their favorite Christmas movie, whether it's "Trading Places" or "Home Alone" and so on, although I have more sympathy for those who prefer "Gremlins" (a cult classic of my life). I have another, and it's "The Gold Rush", 1925, directed by, and I apologize if it's not much, Charlie Chaplin, which is also my all-time favorite film, so it's hard to talk about it objectively, but I'll try.
"The Gold Rush" is Chaplin's idea of returning to the funny little man with a cane and bowler hat that had made him famous in the many Mutual and Keystone shorts between 1914 and 1919, after two very different feature films: "The Kid" (1921) in which the figure of Charlie is present but, unlike the short films, is not a well-defined figure in a specific historical moment ("Shoulder Arms", 1918, is an example, an initial example, of telling a dreadful reality through the filter of irony as it will be later with "The Great Dictator", 1940), it's a more abstract figure, inserted in an almost fairytale-like context, as shown in the final dream sequence, in short, it's a fairytale-height Charlie; the subsequent "A Woman of Paris", 1923, is a fine directorial exercise but it's a film where Chaplin appears in a brief cameo and the work is built around the figure of Edna Purviance, with whom Chaplin, who used her very often between 1915 and 1923, had a relationship.
"The Gold Rush" is inspired by a news story narrated by Charles Lafayette McGlashan: an episode of cannibalism that occurred in an expedition lost in California in 1847. In McGlashan's work, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's are mentioned (two of these holidays are present in Chaplin's film); the author writes, "on New Year's morning they ate their moccasins and the laces from their boots" (refer to the famous scene of the shoelaces eaten as if they were spaghetti); the description of the cabin perfectly matches that of the film; one of the protagonists of the literary work chases a bear that disappears in front of him, Chaplin comically reverses the situation.
"The Gold Rush" is, let's say, the fair of Chaplin's thought. The Klondike gold rush of the pioneer era is a pretext to tell the difficulties of the common, simple man in this case, when faced with the great challenges of human existence, be they social (interpersonal relationships) or of another nature, namely nature perceived as an enemy or however tragically hostile. I say tragically because, although it's true that the film contains many comedic sequences, all very famous, and the first part in the cabin is a florilegium of sometimes very elaborate gags and, as always or almost always with Chaplin, studied in every minute detail, in an almost "musical" way, yet the underlying pathos that emerges in the struggle for survival of every individual present in the film is tragic and grave, because grave and inhospitable is the context. As Giorgio Cremonini writes in his brief essay "Chaplin" (Il Castoro edition): "Chaplin thus provides us with a portrait of existence as something whose rules are unknown, where everything appears random; yet at the same time in this disorder he discovers and reveals the laws of hidden order, which are primarily money, then the impossibility of social fusion between men, but also, stubbornly, the search for happiness."
The film is an apologue on money and the way to obtain it. If the pursuit of happiness is a principle inscribed by the founding fathers within the American Constitution, Chaplin knows well that the dollar is the only engine driving the world, particularly the United States. It was yesterday, as it is today. Massive crowds rushing to seek happiness in the form of gold nuggets is not far from those who, today, through high finance seek a glimmer of happiness through stock market speculation, as Battiato said: "Do you want to see that the golden age was just the shadow of Wall Street."
The world of the Keystone shorts is all present in the first part here, but Chaplin feels the need to dissociate from it soon, and in the second half, after the famous bread roll dance, cited by everyone (including Grandpa Simpson), the film becomes something else, almost a sort of life drama in which the ending reveals itself to be ambiguous. "The fact is that no one falls in love with Pierrot, with a clown. Better: in the logic of the Chaplinian universe, no one falls in love with a poor man" (Renzo Renzi).
In the female role, later entrusted to Georgia Hale, Chaplin considers Lolita Mc Murray, known as Lita Grey, who however had an unacceptable curriculum: a terrible actress, discarded by everyone. Chaplin breaks up with Purviance and marries Grey. We are in 1925. After only two years, in 1927, the marriage ends with a much-discussed divorce, which becomes an international case as the separation ends up in court with accusations of mental cruelty. The French surrealists immediately side with Chaplin and with an article titled "Hands off Love" published in their magazine, "La Révolution Surréaliste", target the ex-wife, unequivocally branding her a madwoman and a harlot. Feminism, accusations of sexism were still far from coming.
Ultimately it is a gigantic work, a molossus, a monument on which the entire Seventh Art of the twentieth century rests, perhaps one of the most representative and sensational films of the entire history of cinema, because it contains everything a film should contain: humor, laughter, tragedy, adventure, nostalgia. And all in just 81 minutes. The film is, of course, silent, but Chaplin always liked this work more than all the others, and in 1942 he re-edited a sound version (with a slightly different musical commentary) of 72 minutes, but it must be said, with all due respect to Chaplin, that, besides being a truncated version, it is also somewhat rushed, as the sound commentary, although intrusive, eliminates much of the original magic of the film. In Italy, unfortunately, only the second version was circulated, until, in recent times, it was finally replaced by the original one, thanks to the usual geniuses of the Cineteca di Bologna. Since they were at it, all praise to them, they even restored it digitally.
A masterpiece.
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