- Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush contains a few brilliant scenes. In one, Chaplin's Little Tramp and a starved prospector named Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain) try to enjoy dining on the Tramp's boiled shoe. I had seen countless parodies of this scene in cartoons and elsewhere, but none of them did it justice. Absolutely hilarious. In another great scene, the Tramp's pants begin to fall down as he's dancing with his idee fixe, Georgia (Georgia Hale). As an impromptu solution, the Tramp ties a rope around his waist only to find that the rope is attached to a dog. Perhaps needless to say, the dog soonafter spots a nearby cat. The film's grand finale involving a precariously balanced house is another amazing and iconic scene that successfully incorporates impressive special effects and physical comedy. But then there's the rest of the film.
- Much to my surprise, these excellent scenes were separated by what I felt were large stretches of dullness. I think many people are attracted to Chaplin because his films tend to mix drama and comedy. In my view, however, the drama is so vastly inferior to the comedy that it only makes the serious scenes seem agonizingly slow. I was also a bit underwhelmed by Chaplin's famous "dancing rolls" scene that is slightly longer than it is charming. This is the first Chaplin film I've reviewed, so I won't generalize any further except to point out that the first Buster Keaton film I reviewed, The General, was riveting from beginning to end.
