The Trail of '98

In 1896 gold was discovered on a small creek in the Klondike district of Canada's Yukon region. Despite the extreme remoteness of the location and the tremendous difficulties involved in getting there, over the next four years 30,000 people would travel to the boom town of Dawson City, desperate for wealth. Eventually, $100,000,000 in gold would be discovered by these hardy argonauts. THE TRAIL OF '98 tells their story.

One of the last epic silent films, MGM spared no expense and filmed largely on location. Although almost forgotten today, this is a wonderful movie full of romance & adventure. Its most famous scenes involve the hideous climb over Chilkoot Pass, which separated the disembarkation point of Skagway from the Yukon River, where the gold seekers had to build their own boats and run the rapids down to Dawson. The shots of the long line of men & women, toiling like ants up the steep slope of Chilkoot, with the weak dying along the way, isn't soon forgotten.

The cast is first rate, although many of them are forgotten now: Dolores Del Rio, Ralph Forbes, Harry Carey, Karl Dane, Emily Fitzroy, Roscoe Karns, Tully Marshall & Doris Lloyd. Playing saints or sinners, they help make this film truly memorable.

Tragedy struck during the filming of the short river rapids sequence. A cord was strung across the river, but the safety loops hanging from it were allowed to become knotted & slippery, thus giving the stuntmen nothing to grab and cling to as they swept beneath it. Of the eight stuntmen shown in the film running the rapids, four were to drown; two of the bodies were never recovered.

This silent movie from 1928 is an epic drama centered on the real-life Klondike gold rush of 1897-98, with portions of it real (e.g. the treacherous ascent up the Chilkoot Pass), and others making up the story of the fictional characters. Among the prospectors are a couple who meet and fall in love, played by Dolores del Rio and Ralph Forbes. Their chief nemesis is a schemer played by Harry Carey, who always seems a step ahead of everyone else. There are several other prospectors who provide humor (usually quite dated) as well as the pathos of their situation, enduring one hardship after another.

The movie is drawn out and styled as an epic, 'big' film. I found it somewhat tedious in big patches of the first half, but it grew on me. Director Clarence Brown ('A Free Soul' and 'National Velvet' among four other Oscar nominations) includes some decent special effects in scenes such as an avalanche and a man being lit on fire, and heightens emotional tension with slow zooms into the actors' faces. In a scene that made me smile, Carey sits down to a steak dinner and has plates of beans brought in around it, so that he can eat a 'real meal' in front of them, having lived on beans for six months. Despite the cuteness and simple dialog in the film, there are moments of real grit, including betrayal, an implied rape, and scenes on the rapids which actually killed four stuntmen. There are parts which definitely stand up close to 90 years later, and it's worth sticking with.

Would you quit your job working on trains and commit, by what today might be considered, kidnapping and endangerment of a minor? Abandon your wife in Michigan? Abandon your entire family in Kansas? Stow away by train or ship? Abandon the dry gold fields of the Nevada desert--well, sure, who wouldn't do that.... To sail from San Francisco, to slog through the snowdrifts and mountain trails of the North, risk the rapids of the Yukon River, avalanches, freezing and starving to death, only to, then, fear fever, being assaulted, robbed and swindled, raped and forced into prostitution, eaten by dogs, or lit like a human torch... plus mosquitoes? I mean, yeah, gold is cool, but....

Set during the Klondike Gold Rush, "The Trail of '98" is more of an ensemble, rather than star-driven, late silent adventure epic that features a synchronized soundtrack of so-so sound effects and musical scoring (the sentimental lyrics for one smooching scene in particular was too much, and, at other moments, the constant blasts of wind can be grating). Indeed, it's a bit difficult and partly a wasted effort to try to keep track of all the characters--only some of whom ultimately drive the plot forward. The most important is the romance between Berna (early Mexican star Dolores Del Rio) and Larry, as threatened by the baddie Jack Locasto (Harry Carey, a star of Westerns with the moniker "Cheyenne Harry" early on, but who was transitioning to character roles by now). Larry teams up with some other prospectors in his pursuit for gold, but they're hardly worth mentioning and are only occasionally amusing.

It's no challenge to Charlie Chaplin's "The Gold Rush" (1925) as the best film made regarding Klondike yellow metal, but this one does feature some spectacular set pieces, visual effects and stuntwork, which, reportedly, included real-life casualties. The avalanche and fire scenes are especially grizzly, as is the wintry location shooting, and even the rear-projection photography for the rapids is relatively not too bad. On the other hand, there's far too much set-up, including excessive title cards, to get to the good stuff and even much of that is rudimentary, Victorian-style melodrama, while also resembling a wild-Northern Western. Most of the side characters and subplots aren't compelling enough to justify their inclusion.

The director here, Clarence Brown, could be a visually masterful filmmaker. He learned from one of the pioneers of cinematic visual innovation in Maurice Tourneur during the 1910s and into the early 1920s. He's, perhaps, best remembered for directing a few Greta Garbo vehicles, as well as pictures for other famous actresses, but some of them are remarkably lovely pictorially, and the romances are more effective than here, too. "Flesh and the Devil" (1926), in particular, is a masterpiece in these regards. I wonder what a filmmaker better adept at exploiting nature as a character could've done with this film, though--namely, Swedish émigrés Victor Sjöström or Mauritz Stiller, for instance. Or, perhaps, the blind character here could've been exploited to comment on the loss of visual virtuosity in the transition from silents to talkies, as was the flower girl in Chaplin's "City Lights" (1931), or even how blindness was associated with art by Yevgeni Bauer in "Za schastem" (1917). Instead, there is spectacle in "The Trail of '98" to see, but one need overlook the narrative dullness.

Miners are returning with gold from the Klondike fields. Soon, the news spreads across the country and fortune seekers rush in from everywhere. I like the big innocent guy getting taken by the scamming huckster. I'm less interested with everybody else including the young couple. Of course, they are at the melodramatic center of the movie. Once they get to the snowy north in a storm, I would stop the music and pump up the wind sounds. This wind sound is closer to a siren than actual wind. Generally, I don't like the accompanying music. It doesn't fit the material. I don't know if the music has been changed but I don't like it. On the other hand, I do like the snow scenes. The outdoor shots look impressive including climbing up a mountain and the wild river ride. The fake snow scenes are less impressive but I can see the appeal of some of the special effects for their time. This is a solid silent era drama.

Gold is surely what made people most dream of during all civilizations. This is proved again very completely in this film where we discover very different characters who only have one aim : Klondike.

We particularly follow the story of a young girl, played by the beautiful Dolores Del Rio. Clarence Brown alternates dramatic scenes and very funny ones which appeal to you the memory of Gold rush by Charlie Chaplin. It's very to rare to watch such a film nowadays, so don't hesitate if you have the occasion.