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The Gold Rush (1925) is the quintessential Chaplin/Little Tramp film, with a
balance of slapstick comedy and pantomime, social satire, and emotional and
dramatic moments of tenderness. It was Chaplin's own personal favorite film, that
showcases the classic Tramp character (referred to as "The Little Fellow" in the re-
release version) as a romantic idealist and lone gold prospector at the turn of the
century, with his cane, derby, distinctive walk, tight shabby suit, and mustache.
Classic scenes include the starvation scene of two cabin-marooned prospectors
boiling and fastidiously eating a stewed shoe, the Tramp's cabin-mate deliriously
imagining his companion as a large chicken, the teetering cabin on the edge of a
cliff, and Chaplin's lonely fantasized New Year's Eve party (with the dancing
dinner rolls routine) when he waits for a girl who never comes.
A smashing success when Chaplin first released it in 1925 at the height of his
career, The Gold Rush went on to further heights of popularity in the sound era
when Chaplin dusted it off in 1942 and produced a new quasi-sound version,
replacing the intertitles with humorous documentary-like narration by Chaplin
himself and scoring a new soundtrack for good measure.
The Tramp—small, innocent, beleaguered, romantic, oblivious, resourceful,
idealistic—lives inside everyone, but Charlie Chaplin made him manifest, with
humor that is never cruel, never aggressive, and always speaks to our best
selves. The Gold Rush takes the Tramp, in his longest outing to date, from rags to
riches, thus combining the pleasure of laughing at his pratfalls with that of
vicariously sharing in his eventual good fortune—and what could have more
universal appeal? 
The Gold Rushwas Chaplin's favorite among his own films, so much a favorite that
he deliberately did not copyright it, allowing it to pass into the public domain as a
gift to his future public. Inspired by stories of the Donner Party, trapped in a desert
of ice, and perhaps by the icy landscapes of Robert Flaherty's popular documentary
feature,Nanook of the North, Chaplin took his Tramp character to the frozen gold
fields where human beings endure great hardships so that they might strike it rich.
The Tramp is too kind, too sensitive to human needs, and too spiritual for that
isolated, materialistic world. The Tramp's kindness in befriending Georgia, an
abused dance-hall girl, contrasts with other human actions in the film—with those
of Jack, Georgia's handsome boyfriend who treats her as his sex object; or with
those of Black Larsen, a man so hungry for gold that he robs and kills others.
Despite the serious moral issues which the film raises in its contrast of material and
spiritual human pursuits, its popularity derives from the power of its comedy
sequences. In one of the most famous of Chaplin's transpositions of objects—his
conversion of one kind of physical object into another—the Tramp cooks a dinner
for himself and his starving friend, Big Jim McKay. Lacking anything else to eat,
the Tramp sacrifices one of his own symbols, his floppy shoe, which he boils
carefully in a pot, testing it with a fork for tenderness. He then carves it like a roast
beef, twirls the shoestrings around his fork like spaghetti and sucks on the nails
like chicken bones. In a later sequence, lacking even a shoe to eat, Charlie converts
himself into a mammoth chicken—or so Big Jim imagines. The contrast of
Charlie's chickenish actions with the cannibalistic dreams of his sometime friend
reveals the typical Chaplin method of making comedy out of the most basic and
elemental human needs—love, shelter, hunger.
Balancing the comedic scenes is one of the most effective and powerful sequences
of pathos and poignancy in the entire Chaplin canon. Charlie has invited Georgia,
whose picture he preserves under his pillow next to a rose, and several of her
friends at the dance hall to supper on New Year's Eve. They, making fun of the
pathetic little Tramp, have teasingly promised to attend the supper. As he waits for
them, Charlie falls asleep and dreams of the delightful dinner that will never be. He
entertains the girls by sticking two rolls on the ends of two forks and using them to
dance the "Oceana Roll." The sight of Charlie's playful face, coyly peering over the
tops of these two tiny, dancing legs is one of the most memorable single images in
Chaplin's work. But Charlie awakens to find that his social success has only been a
dream—like his many dreams of love and success in earlier films. The pathos of
his loneliness is emphasized by the communal society of revelers singing "Auld
Lang Syne," while Charlie, shown isolated within the frame, stands outside the
circle of their friendship and observes.
However, almost miraculously, the Tramp eventually finds both love and wealth in
this film. Charlie, now rich from his gold strike, discovers Georgia on board the
same ship on which he is travelling home. She has had enough of the frozen
wasteland (Chaplin typically uses the hired dance-hall girl as a metaphor for
prostitution, the conversion of female sexuality into a commodity to be bought and
sold). Georgia reveals her kindness when she protects Charlie from the ship's
captain, believing him to be a stowaway. And Charlie, in turn, returns the girl's
kindness by embracing her, now that he can offer her money as well as love. In
what seems Chaplin's own conscious comment on the film's happy ending, a group
of shipboard photographers, taking pictures of the former Tramp now a millionaire,
criticize a photograph of the Tramp's kissing Georgia: "You've spoiled the picture."
Chaplin seemed to have been anticipating the film's critics whom he expected to
attack this last scene.
The issue that the ending raises is whether the Tramp can ever find happiness with
a romantic-sexual mate. Must the Tramp, as outcast and outsider, also be
disqualified from the consummation of love, which in our society is formalized by
marriage? The previous Chaplin films to end with a happy, affirmative answer to
this question (The Vagabond, A Dog's Life, The Kid) also suggest something
dreamlike and impossible about such a solution. This dreamlike suggestion about
the Tramp's attainment of marital happiness becomes explicit in films likeThe
BankorShoulder Arms, in which his attainment of the lady of his dreams literally
turns out to be a dream. His next three films,The Circus,City Lights, andModern
Times, will return to the marriage theme with far more ambiguity and
uncertainty.The Gold Rush, which lies at the crossroads of Chaplin's lighter early
work and his more mature and darker features, is probably his most successful film
at producing a completely happy ending without "spoiling the picture."