The Favorites - The Gold Rush (#36)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The Gold Rush (1925/USA/dir. Charlie Chaplin) appeared at #36 on my original list.

What it is • A lone prospector (Charlie Chaplin) waddles up an icy Yukon path, a polar bear calmly following in his footsteps. The ambitious tramp will be stalked by many more troubles before the film ends: he is buried in snow, challenged to fights by burly rivals, nearly frozen in a little cabin, starved to the point of eating his own shoelaces like spaghetti, almost shot by his hungry, hallucinating compatriot Big Jim (Mack Swain) who envisions him as a giant chicken, trapped in a cabin that has been blown precariously onto the edge of a cliff during the night, and, perhaps worst of all, heartbroken by the mocking flirtations of dance hall girl Georgia (Georgia Hale). The little guy meets all these challenges with his usual pluck and imagination, and the film features some of Chaplin's most memorable gags: the aforementioned chicken and shoelaces, of course, but also the frantic balancing act required as the cabin nearly topples over that cliff, and, on a more delicate note, his bread-roll dance number (featured above). The usual mix of pathos and comedy applies, especially in the original, longer cut which Chaplin shortened seventeen years later. Though City Lights and Modern Times provide close competition (and are a bit more complex), this may be Chaplin's most beloved film - it was certainly one of the biggest hits of the silent era.

Why I like it •

Press Play features my De Palma video w/ Kevin B. Lee interview

My video essay (the online work I'm proudest of in any form) "directed by De Palma", featuring clips from Hi Mom, Carrie and Scarface, has just been highlighted on the video essay site Press Play. It's accompanied by an interview with me, conducted by the great video essayist Kevin B. Lee (fair warning: the video contains strong violent and sexual imagery from Brian De Palma's work, and is NSFW).

Below I've reproduced both the interview and the video, which can also be found on PressPlay.

Comedy Countdown - Modern Times (a video essay)

My entry in the Comedy Countdown, a video essay on Modern Times mixing and matching three iconic texts on the famous film, from Otis Ferguson, Roland Barthes, and Graham Greene. Enjoy!

Want to read an essay about Chaplin?

Aloud? In my video essay? Right now??

I am preparing my entry in the Wonders in the Dark comedy countdown, which will appear by early tomorrow morning on that site and mine. It's a video essay in which I interweave clips from Modern Times with selections from great pieces by Roland Barthes, Graham Greene, and Otis Ferguson. Right now, the temp track I'm cutting to is my voice narrating all three authors and frankly I'd rather have a variety of narrators especially to cut back and forth between the authors, putting them into conversation without confusion as to whose saying what (at present, I'm using titles to indicate this but shifting voices would of course be easier).

If you want to take a stab at this last-minute adventure, here's what you can do:

1) The essays are listed below. Select one and leave a comment indicating which you've taken (so that if someone else volunteers, they don't take the same one).

2) Read it into your iPhone or other recording device if you have one, and then send me the voice file. If you keep it under 5-7 minutes, or record it in segments less than 5-7 minutes, you should be able to send it in one email. On the iPhone in particular this is very easy to do. My email is movieman0283@gmail.com .

3) Sit back and let me take care of the rest. Unfortunately I'll be away from email for a few hours (so don't ask me, just go for it!), but when I return I'll take what I've gotten and replace my own temp track with your voice. Presto! A Greek chorus of bloggers impersonating critics of old.

I feel a bit like Tom Sawyer whitewashing, haha. But it'll be fun, I promise...

Fair warning, though, if someone has already sent me a recording of one of these I can't guarantee I will use yours. It only takes five minutes, but only take the leap if you're okay with that possibility.

I will see all of you tomorrow morning with my Modern Times video essay regardless of what happens with this option...

The essays follow after the jump:

Silence is Golden: the two versions of The Gold Rush

In the famed Kuleshov experiment, conducted in the Soviet Union immediately after the Russian Revolution, it was demonstrated that audiences would react differently to the same exact shot depending on what shots followed or preceded it. The actor in close-up was interpreted as mourning, for example, when intercut with the image of a corpse, or hungry when alternated with food, or even happy when juxtaposed with a child laughing. There were obvious implications for the theory of montage, but it isn't only editing that alters viewers perception this way: camera position, movement of camera, and movement of actors within the frame can all subtly alter an audience's impression of the same scene, while the more circumstantial elements of a film - like art direction, lighting, or color scheme - can ironically have an even stronger effect.

And then there's the soundtrack, one of the subtlest yet most effective ways to manipulate a viewer. It's an especially problematic element in the case of silent films, whose musical scores were often up for grabs - dependent on what the house organist felt like playing, in later years reliant on whatever generic recordings the video distributor was able to use. That's just music - what of an actual narration, imposed upon the material that orginally "spoke visually"; is such an imposition blasphemy or merely a logical, technological update?

When he re-released The Gold Rush in 1942, Charlie Chaplin nervously cut down his 1925 box-office smash, eliminated the intertitles, composed a new score, and added a playful (self-recorded) voiceover. Mindful that audiences used to talkies might grow restless, Chaplin had taken a sharp turn from his earlier position; for years he had been Hollywood's most (ironically) eloquent voice on the lost art of pantomime, resisting the onset of sound so stubbornly that he waited a dozen years after The Jazz Singer before allowing himself to speak onscreen. Yet apparently Chaplin (along with audiences and critics) was pleased with the results, labelling this cut "definitive" and allowing the original version to disappear from circulation.

City Lights

This is an entry in "The Big Ones," a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. There are spoilers.

"Here is my secret. It is very simple: one sees well only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince

The genius of City Lights lies in its paradoxical ability to convey the heart's invisible essence in entirely visual terms. Entirely visual terms: shot when Hollywood had completely switched over to talkies, the film stubbornly sticks to silence. There are a few clever exceptions. Charlie swallows a whistle which, whenever he hiccups, interrupts entertainers, calls cabs, and attracts every dog in the neighborhood. When boxing (in what is probably the film's funniest and most brilliant sequence), the mismatched Tramp somehow gets the bell rope tied to his neck, so that he can't go very far without it dinging and either calling him back into the ring or deceptively luring him into a well-earned respite. Most notably, the film opens with sound, "dialogue" of a sort which is actually over-recorded gibberish pouring forth from a pontificating politician. It's not only a humorous send-up of official pomposity, but a goof on Hollywood's new obsession with sound itself.

However, while the verbal distortion brings a smile to the face, it is appropriately enough a visual revelation that makes one laugh out loud: a white sheet is lifted from a newly christened monument, and Chaplin is discovered sleeping in the arms of the bombastic statuary, ironically called "Peace and Prosperity." He will experience little of either throughout the course of the movie, yet he does get get little tastes - teases really - of both peace and prosperity throughout. One could say that the comedy is inspired by the glimpses of prosperity (via a wealthy drunkard who showers money and good times on the Tramp - at least until he sobers up), while the pathos is provided by the potential for peace (in the form of a beautiful flower girl who loves Charlie, sight unseen, for his generosity).

Remembering the Movies, Feb. 4 - 10

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

This week, it's two of everything. Two gritty New York pictures back to back (one of which incited a fierce protest movement), two films about fascism (one for, one against) released exactly ten years apart, and two Chaplin classics - one following the other on this list. There's also a bit of cheating going on: since I missed some of these films on the true first screenings, I'm allowing several by on technicalities (either using their wider release date or a particular premiere as the benchmark), including a film I saw in theaters almost exactly two decades ago - my memories of that occasion will appear below. Finally, we've got a connection to the previous post, as you'll see right away. A week later, but ten years older, a certain doctor is stopping by for dinner once again...

Remembering the Movies, Oct. 15 - 21

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

This is a week of outlaws, villains, and renegades - some good, some very bad. Quite a few gangsters, a dictator, and even Satan himherself make appearances, yet there's still room for more ambiguous or even positive rebels, ranging from a vigilante-fleeing hoodlum to a couple precocious punker girls. There are mavericks behind the camera as well: a silent clown taking on the world's leading tyrant, an Establishment-loathing Frenchman paying tribute to the American crime films that inspired him (wait, make that two Establishment-loathing Frenchmen), and another French citizen - this time a Frenchwoman - not only shooting pictures but establishing a studio on American soil. Vive la français (et les diaboliques)!