The Gold Rush Cinematic Language

 Brandon Wright

Prof. Saphire

COM 126.01

9/23/20

                                                       The Gold Rush Cinematic Language

    The Gold Rush in itself is a basic film about Charlie Chaplin in search for gold only to get stuck in a cabin with a prospector and another man. This film was made many years after the Lumiere Brothers made their movies, meaning that now movies had the capability to produce sounds. Although The Gold Rush could've ha sound in it, it made the stylistic choice to not include it and to instead focus on the facial expressions and body movement of the actors to portray what was going on in each situation. The film uses both realism to get its point across to the viewer without having to say anything. The realism comes from it being based in a familiar setting for the time which was Alaska during the height of the gold rush. There were also moments of antirealism in the movie, for example, when Charlie was trying to eat his shoe in the cabin because he was getting so hungry.

    The cinematic language of the movie also deserves praise because it can be enjoyed by all different types of people without having to worry about there being a language barrier. Without the restriction of having to translate the movie into every language for people to enjoy, it can have no words in it and still be revered as a fantastic movie even nearly one hundred years later. 

    George Melies's science fiction film, A trip to the moon, was revolutionary for its time for adding a bunch of special effects that have never been seen by anyone before. The genius of the antirealism that was present in this movie was the fact that we knew nothing about the moon or what was up there, so the people who made that movie had free range to make the moon whatever they thought it would look like. There were aliens, faces on the moon, and even a rocket going into the moon's eye. The use of antirealism in The Gold Rush was not as prominent as in A trip to the moon, but I think The Gold Rush was overall better at portraying it because the antirealism in that film didn't make me feel uneasy like how the trip to the moon film.

    Although this movie was revolutionary because it was essentially a film about human nature as a whole. It dealt with how people will give up their basic necessities as human beings like food, water, and shelter for a glimpse of what fame and fortune could be like for them. Since it was a movie made in the 1920's it could possibly have to deal with the materialism going on in the real world at the time, showing the audience that they don't need every extravagant thing they want in their life and should appreciate what they have now.