EW #8: The Gold Rush (1925)

Charlie Chaplin and Mack Swain in The Gold Rush (1925).

Entry #8 on Entertainment Weekly's list of 100 All-Time Greatest films constitutes the first (and only!) appearance on the list of silent comedy legend Charlie Chaplin.

Now there is no denying that The Gold Rush is a comedy masterpiece, though so too are several of Chaplin's other features, including The Kid (1921), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940). My personal favorites of these are City Lights and Modern Times, and while I can understand the arguments in favor of The Gold Rush, both my personal taste and my film history knowledge convince me that Modern Times (which EW does not include in its rundown) deserves to be the highest-rated Chaplin film on any "best film" list.

In defense of its choice, EW writes that The Gold Rush contains "the most iconic performance by Hollywood's most indelible movie star," and that may be true, for Chaplin's gags in this film -- especially the dinner roll "shoe" dance -- are some of his most memorable and iconic. Yet a film is more than the performance of a single actor.*

The dinner roll dance, one of the most famous sequences in The Gold Rush and in Chaplin's career.

That said, there is much to love in The Gold Rush, and it surely marks a key moment in Chaplin's trajectory as a director. It is only the third feature-length film to star Chaplin as his "Little Tramp" character, and the first Tramp-centric film to be released by United Artists, Chaplin's co-venture with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith. It is also a landmark film for silent comedy in general: film critic Luc Sante calls The Gold Rush "one of the first truly worldwide cultural phenomena" and notes that "it remains the highest-grossing silent comedy" bar none.**

Yet the film is not as coherent as the later Chaplin films I've already singled out as favorites, a fact that even Chaplin himself indirectly acknowledged by re-cutting certain scenes and omitting others in his 1942 re-issue of the film. I am a snobby purist who has never seen the 1942 version, so cannot comment on the relative merits of 1925 vs. 1942, but what I can say is that Chaplin's desire to tinker with the earlier version and to declare the later iteration his preferred, "definitive" cut speaks to the fact that the director was not totally satisfied with how the original hung together.

To be clear, I love the 1925 version and my pointing out that it is not as narratively tight as, say, City Lights or Modern Times is not meant to detract from how completely enjoyable, hilarious, and touching it is. I love watching The Gold Rush. I am simply saying that whatever its pleasures, and they are many, The Gold Rush does not mark the height of Chaplin's powers as a director, nor is it the most memorable, entertaining, or indelible screen appearance of the Tramp character.

The Tramp always represents the socially outcast and the poor, but whereas Modern Times is a sustained, scathing critique of U.S. capitalism, The Gold Rush leavens its critique by allowing the Tramp to strike it rich by the movie's conclusion. Sure, the Tramp (known here as "the Lone Prospector") never succumbs to greed, and is always motivated by "romance" according to Sante.*** Yet his ascent into the upper classes robs The Gold Rush of its reality principle, diminishing the bittersweetness that attends the endings of Modern Times and City Lights, in which the Tramp must uphold his trademark optimism and pluck in the face of unchanged, deeply impoverished material circumstances. I contend that The Tramp's comedy is funnier, and his pathos far more penetrating, when he remains an outcast and (somehow) a survivor. While The Gold Rush dares to show the Tramp being ostracized, marginalized, and mistreated during many touching sequences earlier in the film -- most notably during his failed New Year's Eve dinner party -- it cops out at the conclusion, sacrificing vulnerability and pathos for a more standard happy ending, which is satisfying in its own way but lacks the power and punch of the later Tramp outings.

The tragicomic ending of Modern Times, in which the Tramp 

puts a brave face on an all-but-hopeless situation.

So while I admire and enjoy The Gold Rush a great deal, and consider it a must-have for a "Top 100 films" list in general, I have to go with Modern Times as my pick for the top Chaplin film and probably the top silent comedy as well. Despite The Gold Rush's amazing special effects and its immense global popularity, I find Modern Times to be every bit as technically impressive, every bit as funny, and, in both an ideological and historical sense, more impactful than EW's chosen film.† Ideologically, Modern Times is the most direct critique of capitalism I have ever seen in a mainstream movie. And historically, Times is the Tramp's swan song and Chaplin's final "silent" picture, so is extraordinarily important to film history for both of those reasons.

Lastly, besides the possible fumble it represents in terms of accurately evaluating Chaplin's ouvre, the other problem that this entry exposes is the stupefying dearth of silent films on the EW Top 100 Films list as a whole. I say this not simply to be highbrow; I am genuinely baffled that a great many enjoyable, thrilling, and thoroughly entertaining silents have simply been omitted or ignored by EW, while drek like Return of the King is included on the list. This is ridiculous. Just in the comedy realm alone, I can think of several features -- the Chaplin titles mentioned above, Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality (1923) and The General (1926), and Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! (1923) -- that are much more entertaining AND historically significant than many titles that appear on EW's list.

A lovely shot from The Gold Rush that poignantly depicts the Tramp's 

perennial outsider status.

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* This focus upon a single performance rather than the whole picture also distorts many peoples' views of The Dark Knight, a film which taps the post-9/11 cultural zeitgest like practically no other (if we ignore Zero Dark Thirty) and is elevated by Heath Ledger's bravura performance but is simultaneously plagued by many other glaring structural and aesthetic problems.
** The Gold Rush Criterion Edition booklet (Criterion Collection, 2012), p. 7.
*** Criterion Edition booklet, p. 13.
† Anyone who wants to be blown away by the ingenuity of Chaplin and his cinematographer Roland Totheroh simply must get hold of the Criterion Edition of The Gold Rush and watch the "A Time of Innovation" documentary on the second disc of the two-DVD set.

The Lodger (1927) -- with piano accompaniment! -- at the Dryden

 Ivor Novello as the mysterious titular character in Alfred Hitchcock's 
silent masterpiece The Lodger.

I have sung the praises of Rochester's Dryden Theater before, and will likely continue to do so, as it remains my favorite movie theater in the region. This past weekend I had the extraordinary pleasure of seeing a recently restored print of Alfred Hitchcock's seminal silent film The Lodger, a thriller based loosely upon the unsolved Jack the Ripper case, at the Dryden Theater.  Not only was the print of the film quite beautiful -- I cannot wait until the restored Hitchcock silents referred to as the "Hitchcock 9" are available on home video formats -- but enhancing my experience considerably was the live piano accompaniment of Philip C. Carli.

 

  The very talented and knowledgeable Dr. Philip C. Carli, who frequently provides musical accompaniment to silent film screenings at the Dryden Theater.

First, Dr. Carli knowledgeably introduced the film, offering a detailed account of The Lodger's production history, its importance to Hitchcock's body of work, and its status as a "problem" film due to many still-unresolved questions about the extent of the artistic contributions made by scenarist Eliot Stannard and editor Ivor Montagu, Hitchcock's then collaborators. Carli has a natural flair for public address and gave a very engaging talk; while I always appreciate the pre-film introductions given by various Dryden staffers, Carli's talk ranks as one of the best introductory presentations I've yet seen there.

Then, no sooner did Carli finish his delightful verbal introduction of The Lodger than he sat down at the baby grand piano and masterfully accompanied the entire movie as it screened! I have attended just two other silent film screenings with live musicians before, once back in Oregon and once at last year's "Night at the Movies" concert on my campus. I enjoyed both of those prior performances a great deal, yet Carli's performance accompanying The Lodger took this kind of experience to a wholly new, more emotionally impactful level. His musical choices throughout were impeccable; he knew the film inside-out and timed his cues perfectly with the onscreen action. I am not sure if he was improvising, or what score he might have been working from, but in any case I was totally blown away by the performance and plan to see another film accompanied by Carli as soon as I can.*

I strongly recommend that if you live in the Rochester area, you do the same as me and take advantage of this golden resource. Even if you do not typically consider yourself a fan of silent cinema -- and if you don't, believe me, you are missing out on some of the most visually arresting and beautiful films ever shot -- I still strongly suggest you see one accompanied by the talented and dynamic Carli. His musical presence adds so much to the experience of seeing a silent film that I really cannot fully account for it in words; you should simply go to the Dryden and find out for yourself.**

Lillian Gish sez: "Come see me suffer -- to the soulful musical accompaniment 
of Philip C. Carli!"

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* Fortunately for me, I already know when I will next be seeing and hearing Carli: at the Dryden's screening of The Scarlet Letter (1926) on November 26, 2013 at 8:00pm.
** If you have never been to the Dryden before, or if you have only been prior to Spring 2013, you may want to check out this well-produced short video about the renovation of the theater earlier this year.

Safety Last at the Dryden

The great silent-era comedy star Harold Lloyd.

I live in the Rochester area and therefore am lucky enough to live fairly near to the Dryden Theater, a superb art-house cinema attached to the historical George Eastman House. The Dryden is my favorite theater in the region; it shows a wide array of stuff, from foreign cinema to silent cinema to arthouse cinema to Golden Age Hollywood classics to even more newly minted Hollywood "classics" from as recently as the 1990s or so. Just take a look at the Dryden's linked schedule and you'll see what I mean. If I had endless resources and time, I would likely head over there three or four times a week.

Last night I went with a friend to the Dryden to see Safety Last (1923), the most famous film to star slapstick comedian Harold Lloyd. Lloyd is the least known of the "big three" silent era comedians, the other two being Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Interestingly, despite his somewhat diminished reputation today, Lloyd was the most economically successful of the big three during their heyday the 1920s.

Despite having a great appreciation for the work of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, and even though a couple of Chaplin's films (City Lights and Modern Times especially) are among my very favorite silent comedies, Harold Lloyd stands as my personal favorite silent-era comedian. My Lloyd fandom stems in part from early exposure: when I was young, episodes of "The Harold Lloyd Show" aired on a local station on weekday afternoons. (This was NOT an original show, but a syndicated compilation show that simply aired Lloyd silent shorts.) Upon arriving home from school, my brother and I quite regularly watched that show; we found Lloyd's death-defying antics highly entertaining.

Harold Lloyd in Safety Last (1923): this shot of Lloyd dangling from the clock 

is one of the most famous images in Hollywood history.

However, last night I was reminded of another reason I find Harold Lloyd so appealing and funny: to my taste, he has the funniest face and physique of the big three silent comedy masters. You see, both Chaplin and Keaton are diminutive men who play their small size for comedy, often pairing themselves with big and/or fat guys to make their shrimpiness stand out.

Charlie Chaplin next to frequent co-star "Tiny" Sandford in Modern Times (1936): 

an example of the oft-used "small guy + big guy = funny" comedy technique. 

Lloyd, by contrast, was a big fella, standing 5' 10" compared to Chaplin's and Keaton's modest 5' 5". His work is worthy of present-day appreciation in part because it is simply breathtaking to watch a guy of his physical size -- with a disadvantageously higher center of gravity relative to his smaller contemporaries --  execute the harrowing stunts he always attempts in his films. His penchant for fairly dangerous gags, a signature of his style, makes his work stand out from other silent comedies, especially Chaplin's. (One could argue that Keaton displayed a similar penchant for extreme physical risk-taking, especially whenever he got near trains.)

Lloyd's comedy depends upon his donning those funny round glasses and playing a slightly nerdy and buffoonish sort who just wants to fit in and succeed in life. His characters usually exhibit a positive, go-getter type attitude, which stands in stark contrast to Chaplin's more poignantly marginalized, romantically oriented Tramp and Keaton's hapless yet highly ironic "Great Stone Face" character, who never reacts (facially) to the mayhem ensuing around him. Unlike the politically deconstructive Chaplin and the wryly modernistic Keaton, whose personas resonate more easily with contemporary audiences, Lloyd's Horatio Alger-ish screen persona is a major factor contributing to his being generally less known to today's viewers, accustomed as we are to hip cynicism and postmodern anti-heroism.

As a dedicated fan, however, I had a genuinely lovely time last night, laughing at Lloyd's wacky facial expressions (check out that goofy smile he's flashing at the top of the post!) and delighting in his harrowing yet humorous ascent up the exterior of a tall department store building -- the stunt that constitutes Safety Last's famous, climactic set piece. Prior to the screening, as usually happens at the Dryden, a staff member addressed the audience, delivering a succinct rundown of the film's production history and its significance to Lloyd's career. At the end of her talk, the presenter reminded us that even though some of the shots in the film were visually enhanced via clever camera placement, making Lloyd appear to be much higher off the ground than he was in actuality, one important thing to appreciate about silent-era comedies is that, unlike most films made today, it is always the real actor up there on screen endangering his life just to entertain us. In discussion with my friend afterward, we agreed that it was refreshing, even exhilarating to see a film like Safety Last that doesn't need digital effects or incessant rapid-fire editing to create tension, thrills, and laughs. Those techniques have their place, but this silent-era gem was pure cinema: visually elegant, physically dynamic, and -- most importantly -- huge fun.*

Kudos to the Dryden Theater for preserving and screening such wonderful delights from cinema's rich historical past.

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* The term "pure cinema" was first coined by French abstract filmmaker Henri Chomette in the 1920s, but was later adopted and popularized by Hitchcock, who used the term to describe a purely visual form of cinematic storytelling. That is, in pure cinema one should be able to turn off the sound and still follow the meaning of the action and images onscreen. Hitchcock frequently achieved this goal in his work, which is part of the reason he is so revered -- and why his films hold up so well -- today. Silent films -- the medium in which Hitch got his start -- are almost (except for their reliance upon intertitles) pure cinema by default, since they rely on visuals without the use of any synchronized sound.