Gold Rush

Year: 1925

Grade: B-

Country: USA

Director: Chaplin

Review

(1942 re-release version) – mostly interesting because of how it differs from the longer, silent 1925 version. in 1942 chaplin re-released gold rush with a soundtrack and narration (by him) in order to fill in the blanks and move the action along. what results is a sort of hacked version of a classic. i’ve only seen the 1925 version once, but this one’s 20+ minutes shorter so you know there’s a lot of plot and comedy bits missing. it’s amazing how you can take narration or certain elements for granted in a film that doesn’t have an alternate version. but once you start thinking about a film like this without narration and without sound effects, it becomes clear how much directors can subtract from a film through addition of these elements. in almost every case chaplin’s narration does little to further the comedy, instead it’s a way of (mostly) filling in the blanks left by the massive editing he did for this version. it’s sort of a shame, but it’s also endlessly interesting to compare the two. if i had more time i’d compare the two and see what he added, left out, and changed. it would make for a pretty great paper on the influence of the sound era on the silent film form.

Watched on TV