Andy Morel
Film 2600
Doctor Londino
9/26/11
I. This past week we viewed the gold rush, a classic movie in film history. In the first few weeks we had been learning about Charlie Chaplin and his comedic skills and how there was nothing he couldn’t do once the camera was on him. This went right along with anything I had ever heard or knew about Mr. Chaplin. Until we started talking about his humble beginnings and his origins such as being from London, to him being the most famous person in the world in his time period. We also learned about his reoccurring role as “the tramp” basically an underdog who always managed to succeed in the end. Hearing this and then actually watching the film was mind blowing to me. Since I have seen the same occurrences or storylines if you eill in plenty of movies, so in my eyes now Charlie Chaplin was the creator of the happy ending in Hollywood. Two more things that we learned about that I previous did not know were on full display in this movie were the following. Charlie Chaplin was a great director. We see this as he directed the Gold Rush even though we spent most of our time speaking about D.W. Griffith. Also the second thing was Chaplin’s films being more than just comedy although the gold rush had its funny moments for the most part it was a drama.
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II.
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the article speaks of how before becoming the master of Hollywood Chaplin was Billy in Shelock Holmes and toured the united states. On his second tour he got signed to keystone films to act in movies and in 1914 released his first short film. Chaplin’s brilliantness came from improv very little was scripted in his movies. He was also a perfectionist and demanded everyone to work together in unity. His films often went over budget and over the time it was supposed to take making them. He was one of the most difficult men to work with sometimes replacing actors halfway thru a film but everyone put up with it, because they recognized his genius.
IV. You could definitely see how most of chaplin’s work was improv from him pulling various stunts with his world famous cane. I can also see how he was a perfectionist because each scene in the gold rush was perfect I did not see any errors. With a lack of technology back then there couldn’t be any errors, so I can definitely see them reshooting everything more than once. Also since this movie had no talking the music playing had to match every scene and emotion perfectly and set the tone for what was about to happen and it did.
V. I personally found this movie to be a masterpiece perhaps because I came in expecting so little out of it or maybe it was just Charlie Chaplin’s brilliance that makes me now feel this way. I think we can all relate to his character the little tramp at times. I mean unless you are the new York Yankees there is no way that you can
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always be the favorite, everyone is an underdog at some point. All three things came in full effect on this film the lectures, the text, and the article. Everything was spot on and I can definitely see and feel why the gold rush is an American classic to many. Also like I said before I feel like this was the beginning of the happy ending and the underdog story and perhaps this film and Charlie Chaplin is the reason why till this day we still love the underdog story which I had no clue had originated this far back and passed down from generation to generation.
