Watch-along – The Gold Rush (1925)

directed by Charlie Chaplin

Dear classics watchers,

Join me on Wednesday 25 June, at 8pm UK time, to watch and discuss Charlie Chaplin’s classic film The Gold Rush, which premiered exactly 100 years ago, on 26 June 1925, at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.

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What is it?

The Gold Rush was Charlie Chaplin’s first feature-length film. It follows a hapless prospector’s search for gold in the Klondike and his love for a dance hall girl called Georgia (played by Georgia Hale). It’s shot partly on location in the Sierra Nevadas and features famous sequences such as Chaplin’s dance of the dinner rolls and his meal of boiled shoe leather. It is a timeless silent comedy classic.

Why watch it?

The Gold Rush was the film that cemented the iconic status of Chaplin’s Little Tramp character – and this June marks its centenary. As Chaplin’s biographer Jeffrey Vance writes,

The Gold Rush is arguably his greatest and most ambitious silent film; it was the longest and most expensive comedy produced up to that time. The film contains many of Chaplin’s most celebrated comedy sequences, including the boiling and eating of his shoe, the dance of the rolls, and the teetering cabin. However, the greatness of The Gold Rush does not rest solely on its comedy sequences but on the fact that they are integrated so fully into a character-driven narrative. Chaplin had no reservations about the finished product. Indeed, in the contemporary publicity for the film, he is quoted, ‘This is the picture that I want to be remembered by.’