Word: chaplinitis
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Although it was another generation's children who promised to be good all week if they could see a Chaplin comedy, the bantam tramp with his flapping shoes, battered derby hat, jaunty bamboo cane, absurd black mustache, shabby, defiant clothes, is not dated. The craftsmanship of his effortless performance-the innocent waddle, the peculiar childlike kick, the desperate elegance, the poignant gallantry-is still high comedy...
...hero of The Gold Rush is billed as The Lone Prospector, a tenderfoot out for Alaskan gold. In his running narrative, Chaplin calls him "the Little Fellow." With eloquent timing he jaunts along the rim of a ledge high in Chilkoot Pass, unknowingly trailed by a big black bear, and the picture is away...
That the Little Fellow eventually becomes a multimillionaire wearing two fur coats, one over the other, is unimportant. What matters are the delicious beads of humor strung on the thread of his unique personality. Chaplin cinemaddicts will recognize with tears of joy two famed scenes: trapped by a blizzard in a lonely mountain cabin with a friendly prospector named Big Jim (Mack Swain), Charlie hopefully removes a shoe and places it in the stewpot. Tenderly basting the foul boot with its own juices, he nurses it along to Big Jim's bursting point. "Not quite done yet," soothes...
...Chaplin spent $125,000 refurbishing The Gold Rush, which had cost $2,000,000 to make. While editing out whole sequences and shortening others, he added film which had been cut from the original version, lengthening, in particular, the shoe-stewing sequence and another in which Big Jim, dizzy with hunger, sees the Little Fellow as an enormous chicken...
...last ten years movie distributors have begged Chaplin to reissue some of his great comedies. Chaplin, now 52, and as fiscally astute as ever, is ready to pretty-up The Circus for reissue if The Gold Rush box office warrants...