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By PAUL BRENNER
The film Charles Chaplin called "the picture I want to be
remembered by" is now available on a two-disc digitally restored special
edition as part of The Chaplin Collection from Warner Home Entertainment.
If one where to chose Chaplin's most archetypical feature (his best films being
his Mutual shorts of the late 1910s), "The Gold Rush" would be the one, the film
evenly divided between uproariously funny classic comedy and pantomime and easy
to swallow pathos and sentimentality. And as in the best of Chaplin, the comic
backbone derives from horrific origins -- in this case, desperate starvation and
the Donner party.
This comedy of hunger and wealth has, perhaps, the best of Chaplin's comic set
pieces -- the dance of the rolls, Mack Swain's pursuit of Chaplin whom he
imagines transformed into a giant chicken, a rickety shack teetering on the
brink of a dangerous cliff. And the film looks stunning, the digital restoration
pristine.
But be forewarned: avoid Disc One. Disc One features Chaplin's 1942 reissue of
the film. Not only is the reissue a truncated cut of the original 1925 release
but Chaplin also eliminated all of the intertitles. In their place is inserted
like an annoying blowhard talking into your hearing aid Chaplin's own pompous
and phony House of Lords voice as the film's narrator. As a result, we get such
pathetic voice-over utterances as "With cheerful optimism, our little Columbus
descended into the vast, uncharted waste. The he stopped, stepped, slipped and
slid." Or: "'Now let me see,' thought the Little Man. 'Before I know where I am
I must get there.'" Or my favorite: "The elements laughed, roared, and
thundered." If only Boris Karloff had recited these lines, then Chaplin would
have had something.
Instead, use Disc One as a coaster for your glass of bourbon and go directly to
Disc Two, where amidst the extras is Kevin Brownlow's fine and lovingly restored
version of the original 1925 feature. The film can then be appreciated for the
great work of film comedy that it is and Chaplin's voice be damned.
The extras also include an introduction to the film by Chaplin biographer David
Robinson, a 26-minute documentary on "The Gold Rush," four international
trailers for the film, a photo and a poster gallery, and clips from other films
available in The Chaplin Collection. |
