Topic 1: Reflection on The Gold Rush- Cineamtic Language

     The Gold Rush was ahead of it's time for sure. One of my favorite sequences in the Charlie Chaplin film was when the two men were in the Cabin and it started to sway back and forth. At first you get an eerie feeling from the scene. The music is slower, darker and the shots are slower as well. It was clear that Chaplin wanted to strike fear among the viewer. Although it isn't really up to par with today's standards of horror or thriller, I'm sure it scared my great grandma half to death. The scene quickly switches to more of a comedic vibe with lighter music, quicker shots, and the two guys running back and forth trying to keep the Cabin straight. The reason this part was funny was because they were doing an awful job trying to keep the cabin up and instead were making it go back and forth like a seesaw. This felt like it was straight out of the three stooges. The more this scene goes on the more you see different transitions from eerie to funny to edgy. They are in a life or death situation, yet they are providing us a funny feel to the movie by using silly dialog, music, and shots. It's confusing, but I think that's what Chaplin wanted. He was a confusing man and made many movies depicting different ridiculous, or serious characters. He made it a thing for himself to use situations to sway the viewers emotions so that the end result would be even better. Cinematic language is used in every film, but in this film I think the strongest tool that Chaplin used for it was music. Music in my opinion is the strongest way to make the viewer feel a certain way. Chaplin did a great job using different pieces of music in different ways for the same scene.