Gold Rush By James dunn

The Gold Rush is a silent movie produced, directed, composed, and starring Charlie Chaplin. This movie had a production cost of 900,000 dollars in 1925 which is equivalent to 11,000,000 of today's dollars; calculated at (http://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=900000&year=1920) The Gold Rush was thought of when Chaplin was viewing a stereoscope featuring the California gold rush; he wanted to attempt making a comedy about serious events in popular culture to trigger large audiences. (http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/5779/The-Gold-Rush/articles.html)

The story line takes place as his character the Tramp treks to Alaska to find gold meeting characters on his way and finding trouble and misfortune around every corner. Another theme Chaplin touched on was that of the Donner party bringing some humor to the devastating events that occurred on the cannibalistic trip. while in the cabin a man sees Charlie as a chicken and tries to kill and eat him, this symbolism is used to bright light to unfortunate events.

The Gold Rush was the first movie to use special effects; most of which took place in the cabin. The wind would blow the cabin causing the walls to bellow and swell, and when the door opened the characters would get blown in from one door and out another leaving the audience with quite the comedic scenario. (http://www.charliechaplin.com/en/biography/articles/5-The-Gold-Rush)In the article Filming the Gold Rush by David Robinson it states that the film was shot with a small and large model almost seamlessly for its time and the cabin teeters on the edge of the cliff; the footage is amazing for the technology available at the time. I was adamant about the fact of watching a silent film but to my surprise I enjoyed it very much. Although it was dated and about a topic I didn't have much interest in it was highly entertaining and had a lot of depth in the storyline. It opened my eyes on how people interacted 100 years ago and it was somewhat refreshing that people didn't change very much. Georgia the leading lady is Chaplin's love interest in the film, but fails to let him in due to the fact she had her eyes set on the macho jock type; not too far off from today's plot lines.

This movie was a historical landmark in the filmmaking process, bringing new ideas to the table and challenging the world of entertainment MORDAUNT HALL expresses in his New York Times article The Gold Rush (1925)THE SCREEN; Charlie Chaplin's New Comedy. (http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C03E7D61531EE3ABC4F52DFBE66838E639EDE) Thanks to Chaplin's drive and creativity he assisted in paving the way for other film makers to push the envelope and challenge themselves with new and improved forms tactics to amuse audiences everywhere.

CHECKLIST FOR PLAGIARISM 1) ( ) I have not handed in this assignment for any other class. 2) ( ) If I reused any information from other papers I have written for other classes, I clearly explain that in the paper. 3) ( ) If I used any passages word for word, I put quotations around those words, or used indentation and citation within the text. 4) ( ) I have not padded the bibliography. I have used all sources cited in the bibliography in the text of the paper. 5) ( ) I have cited in the bibliography only the pages I personally read. 6) ( ) I have used direct quotations only in cases where it could not be stated in another way. I cited the source within the paper and in the bibliography. 7) ( ) I did not so over-use direct quotations that the paper lacks interpretation or originality. 8) ( ) I checked yes on steps 1-7 and therefore have been fully transparent about the research and ideas used in my paper. Name: _____________________James T. Dunn_________________ Date: 3/2/2014