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he had chosen to do manual labour"; but the film gained because of it, and his example was followed by others.
By the spring of 1924, Chaplin had started work on The Gold Rush, and in due course released what was to become his best-loved film, not excepting even The Kid.
The visual beauty of The Gold Rush transcends even its comedy. Chaplin the poet saw the grandeur of the snow plains of Alaska as his decor, and put up against that dazzling expanse the black, dwarfed file of prospectors, the silhouette of Charlie, the burly outlines of Mack Swain. The film is a panorama in black and white, the most absolute use of the obvious resources of film that had ever been made, and the most successful. The decor thoughtfully provided by Nature and Chaplin's poetic imagination, plays a decisive part in the film. The white unbroken snows give an imponderable impression of solitude, of eternity, of man's littleness in the vast scheme of the universe. Against it, Charlie's small, gallant silhouette stands out in sharp relief — as when he sits forlorn in the middle of the empty plain, equipped for prospecting by the addition of a shawl to his bowler, cane and baggy trousers. The log cabin, where most of the drama is to be played out, achieves greater prominence because of this opposition of black and white. Even the cosy warmth of the saloon is enhanced because of the cold, still snows looming under a heavy sky just outside.
Tragedy and comedy are so blended in The Gold Rush that the audience is kept throughout on the border-line between laughter and tears, the most perfect balance yet achieved by this tight-rope walker, expert in treading delicately on the verge of the opposite emotions.
Charlie is a complete person here, filled with a rich humanity that strips him entirely of his earlier fantasy, his poetry, his almost mythological presentation. Now his feet are firmly rooted on earth, in the snow. And he, who has always been up against society, is now up against nature itself. The perils and dangers that have always beset him are transmuted now from falling into ponds and being chased by policemen, into avalanches that carry his log cabin to the very edge of a precipice, where he rocks half-suspended over infinite space; or great black bears that dog his unknowing footsteps.
Chaplin's building of the scenes, from the time of the snow-storm that shuts up the three prospectors in a small cabin amid the vast, oppressive silence of the snows, grows in tension to generate the gradual compelling hatred of each for the others. This building of tension continues between the two remaining after one has gone to seek help, based on a theme of hunger and fear. Comes the unforgetable scene of the stewed boots, consumed with grace, elegance, and difficulty by Charlie; the scenes that create an intense feeling of