# 168 The Gold Rush (1925)

The Gold Rush is Charlie Chaplin's forth film on the list. It tells us about "The Tramp" who takes part in the Alaska Gold Rush. We follow him through different adventures as he's trying to find gold and win the heart of a saloon girl.

I got to see a re-release of this movie, which I believe was made in 1942, with a new musical score. Much of the new music was written by Charles Chaplin himself, in collaboration with musical director Max Terr. Chaplin also added sound effects to the film, and replaced the silent movie title cards with descriptive voice-over narration.

If you get past the fact that I watched the re-release, this is the oldest movie I've seen to this day. Nevertheless, the plot is pretty interesting (for such an old movie). Chaplin himself mentioned many times that this is the movie he wanted to be remembered for. There's not much I can say about it, I mean everybody knows it's a classic, but motion pictures have advanced so much that it's sort of hard for me to take this film seriously.

There were two really memorable scenes though. The first one is, of course, the dance with bread rolls, so if you haven't seen the movie, at least check out the dance on youtube, it's absolutely worth it. My second favorite scene is when Charlie Chaplin was dancing with his girl, and he didn't know he had a dog tied to his belt. He was a genius, a good actor, and an outstanding comedian.

Interesting fact: The "dancing rolls" sequence was so popular with audiences that, in some cases (such as the film's Berlin premiere), projectionists stopped the film and replayed the scene.