The Gold Rush (1925)

Look, I know what I'm walking into saying this. The Gold Rush is one of the most celebrated films ever made, a cornerstone of the Chaplin canon, and practically untouchable in critical circles. I watched it. I sat with it. And I was bored out of my skull.

I'll be honest, I've been making my way through a fair bit of silent cinema lately. I found things to admire in The General and I've spent time with Chaplin before on The Kid and The Circus. So it's not like I walked into The Gold Rush with a chip on my shoulder about the era. I genuinely try to meet films on their own terms. But there's a point where intellectual generosity tips over into pretending you enjoyed something you didn't, and I'm not doing that here.

The pacing is the biggest problem. It drags. And I don't mean it takes its time in a patient, considered way. I mean it loses the thread repeatedly and asks you to wait around while it finds it again. There are set pieces here that people have been quoting for a hundred years, and sure, I recognise the craft in them. The bit with the bread rolls is clever. Fine. But clever and funny are different things, and I found myself watching these moments with a kind of detached respect rather than genuine delight. Nothing landed for me the way I was hoping.

Then there's the soundtrack. The ragtime accompaniment starts off fitting enough, the jaunty, busy energy matching the Klondike setting. But it just keeps going, relentlessly, in that same register, and by the midpoint I found it genuinely grating. Music in silent film is doing heavy lifting, I understand that, but this particular score felt like it was papering over silences rather than deepening anything.

And the comedy itself. I know Chaplin was a genius. I know the Tramp is one of the great screen creations. But so much of the physical humour here felt like it needed an audience around me, the shared energy of a picture house in 1925, to actually take flight. Watching it alone in 2025, the gags feel telegraphed, the timing that must have seemed miraculous to contemporary audiences reads as slow by modern standards. That's not Chaplin's fault, exactly. But it is the reality of watching it now.

I keep seeing near-perfect scores on this and I genuinely don't know what to say. I don't think those people are wrong, exactly. I think they're either meeting the film with a kind of historical reverence that I struggle to separate from actual enjoyment, or they're wired differently to me when it comes to this style of comedy. Both are fine. But I can only write about what I actually experienced, and what I experienced was a long, slow, not particularly funny film with a soundtrack that wore me down.

One and a half stars.

Rating: ★½  | Year: 1925  | Watched: 2025-04-15

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Charlie Chaplin: The Kid (1921) · The Circus (1928)
More with Charlie Chaplin: The Kid (1921) · The Circus (1928)
More from the 1920s: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · The Docks of New York (1928) · A Throw of Dice (1929)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)