The Gold Rush* (date for this event to be confirmed soon)

*If anyone wants to attend, but would prefer Sun 28th Sept at 14:00 please let me know (that time is also possible for me currently).

Upon its release in June 1925, The Gold Rush was accompanied by a wealth of anecdotes: In some European theatres, projectionists were forced to rewind the reel to satisfy delirious audiences’ demands for an encore of the “bread roll dance”. In the early 1940s Chaplin decided to replace the original intertitles with a narrated commentary, he also changed the editing and shortened the ending. When the film was re-released in May 1942, few people understood the changes. However, the newly orchestrated score represented one of the expressive highpoints in his career as a composer.
In the 1990s, Kevin Brownlow and David Gill undertook a complex reconstruction of the silent version. ‘The Gold Rush isn’t the only film for which Charlie Chaplin is remembered, but without doubt the decision to take The Tramp to the roots (or the precipice) of American mythology, to place his solitary figure against the snowy backdrop of the birth of a nation, makes it a work of unsurpassed, dizzying intensity.’ (Cecilia Cenciarelli, Il Cinema ritrovato)

The film stars Chaplin in his Little Tramp persona, and Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman and Malcolm Waite.

The Gold Rush was a huge success in the US and worldwide. It is the fifth-highest-grossing silent film in cinema history, earning more than $4,250,000 at the box office in 1926 (~$58.6 million in 2023). Chaplin proclaimed at the time of its release that this was the film for which he wanted to be remembered. It earned United Artists $1 million and Chaplin himself a profit of $2 million.

Certificate: U, 88 minutes long, 1925.

We'll go for a drink or snack after the film (probably at the venue itself).