Charlie Chaplin

Silent Movie / Comedy

In a reprisal of Chaplin’s ‘tramp’ persona he heads off to the Alaskan territory with just his cane (and woefully underdressed) looking to capitalize on the gold rush.  He runs into a storm and takes shelter in what seems to be an abandoned cabin – but its currently being used by an escaped criminal who isn’t too happy with the new company. He chases Chaplin off in a comical wind/storm scene but then a prospector (Big Jim) who found gold seeks shelter from the storm in the cabin and overpowers the criminal. There’s an uneasy standoff where the three men begin to starve and they draw straws to see who goes out into the storm to get food. The criminal is sent off and promptly finds bounty hunters looking for him who have a nice sled full of supplies. He shoots them and steals their supplies and promptly vanishes from the movie (I’m not really sure why he even was in the plot except maybe as an antagonist for the staged cabin scenes)

Cut back to the cabin and there’s the famous scene of Chaplin boiling his shoe to have something to eat (imagery featured frequently in images of hobos) and then Big Jim being delirious due to hunger and imagining Chaplin as a giant delicious chicken they have a quick chase and then big Jim comes to his senses and leaves to find his gold only to be assaulted by that criminal guy and left unconscious in the snow!

Cut to a different movie altogether for a while for a weird romance subplot where Chaplin meets a dancer who flirts with him to anger another guy and then agrees to go to dinner with Chaplin on NYE. On NYE Chaplin sets up his cabin all nice and then does the famous dancing roll bit (Oceana roll) then falls asleep waiting for her to arrive. She never does (quite a sad bit where he looks in the window and see her dancing with that handsome fella. He wanders off and then Georgia and her friends go to cause trouble for ‘the tramp’ but then see all the effort he want to for the party and she clearly feels guilty at her behavior. Later Chaplin goes into the party to confront them when big Jim rolls in (having lost his memory after the assault) and grabs Chaplin and says ‘we need to find the cabin! Then we can find my gold and I’ll share it with you!’ — so they head back to the cabin and get some rest before they head out but then a crazy storm blows in and blows the entire cabin to a cliff edge!

They wake up and a funny bit ensues where they walk back and forth and the cabin teeters on the edge but they think it might be a hangover but then when Chaplin opens the door he sees he’s dangling off a cliff and then they spend a few minutes figuring out how to escape but fate has smiled on them – the storm blew them right to big Jim’s mine! They’re rich!

Cut to them dressed fancily in furs and smoking cigars walking on a ship to sail back to America as millionaires – we see Chaplin’s girl also sailing out as it seems things didn’t work out with handsome man (she never really seemed that into him to begin with). Some various hijinks ensue where she shows she’s a somewhat good and remorseful person (offering to pay for his ticket when the crew thinks he’s a stowaway) and Chaplin goes in for the kiss and roll credits.

4/5 stars – The movie is iconic for a reason – so many tropes were born from this movie as well as call backs in many modern movies (the bread roll dance in Benny and Joon, countless eating your boots scenes.. Etc.) and for a silent movie it conveyed both comedy and pathos very effectively you forget it’s a silent movie and are drawn into the narrative completely.

(side note: apparently there’s a 1941 version re-cut by Chaplin that includes his own score and narrated interstitial panels. .might watch that if I have the time)