Kristin Langevin The Gold Rush

Kristin Langevin

Com126.01

Professor Saphire

24 September 2020

The Gold Rush 

Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush from 1925 has a vast variety of cinematic language incorporated within its roots. Cinematic language is the concept of representing ideas and concepts through actions rather than explicitly stating verbally the context of the events. The type of communication that is displayed in the film includes aspects of realism and antirealism. Realism in film is the recording of movements that resemble real life, and is similar to how documentaries are shot. Antirealsim is when fantastical happenings occur that aren’t applicable to our daily perception, and are typically exaggerated to express how radical the scenario is. 

The opening scene of The Gold Rush is a wonderful display of how realism is captured. It is recordings of many travelers simply hiking their trails to get to their destination. Similarly, the Lumiere brothers established a film titled Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory, where the entirety of the video is just a recording of people leaving the gates of a facility. Afterwards, the film begins to use continuity editing to show Charlie climbing up the mountain. This creates the sense that he emerged from this group of climbers, and set off on his own journey. This captures everyday life and is easily understood and deciphered when watched, which ultimately is what realism achieves. 

To contradict natural possibilities, antirealsm challenges this idea, and is captured well throughout The Gold Rush. Two scenes stand out: Charlie Chaplin being pushed out of Black Larsen’s house due to the snowy winds, and when the house is about to tip off the edge of the mountain unless tipped onto the correct side. Even more absurd is when Charlie and Big Jim begin to eat a boot. Afterwards in a starving hallucination, Big Jim begins to see Charlie as a chicken. None of these events in either creation is humanly possible, placing it within the category of antirealsim. These moments resembled A Trip to the Moon. This film seems to be even deeper into this style, creating scenes that are not only impossible, but also to the extent of being considered supernatural. Charlie Chaplin channeled Georges Méliès, taking his intergalactic story, and placing elements of it within the setting of a cabin.

The Gold Rush was a beautiful addition to the silent era, and ultimately altered cinematic language. The thoughtfully curated movements Chaplin captured created a sense of knowledge, a deep understanding of how and why people and things are placed meticulously in film. The use of realism added familiarity, while the involvement of antirealism creates a fantastical viewing. The fact that The Gold Rush was able to bring forth both forms and content of realism and antirealism further proves its importance in cinematic language expansion. When looking at films prior to this, like Birth of a Nation or A Trip to the Moon, it is evident that these films tended to lean dramatically into either realism or antirealism. What makes The Gold Rush so profound is its ability to capture elements of both realism and antirealism within its runtime. Just as the house leans at the top of the mountain, so too does this film in its harmonization between portraying reality, and being bizarre. For this reason, it expanded cinematic language.