Some New Stuff on _The Gold Rush_

I took Jeffrey Vance up on his invitation to e-mail him, and
asked him some questions about the two versions of _The
Gold Rush_.

According to Jeffrey, Chaplin was so convinced that his
re-issue was the version of the film that would please
future audiences that he destroyed the negatives of '25
after the success of the reissue was apparent.

I can hear you gasp. But bear in mind Jeffrey's observation
that Chaplin was not an archivist or a film historian. He
was an artist who gauged his success partly by audience
response, and to all appearances audiences loved the sound
version of _The Gold Rush_.

Jeffrey also mentioned that Chaplin cut the film to 75
minutes so that it would fit into the double bill programs
customary in the early forties, thus making more bookings
possible. I take this to mean that if a longer length had been
customary, he might not have cut it at all. At the very
least, he might have kept the original ending.

But on reflection, it seems to me that he had a good sense
what he could do without. '42 is a very lean cut.
What would we scrap if we put the Georgia-Jack byplay
back in?

I wonder if Chaplin thought that by destroying the
negatives of '25, he was also insuring that only one version of
the film would exist. Therefore the copyright on '42 would
be sufficient. This may--besides the disruptions in his
personal life--have influenced his letting the copyright
on '25 lapse in '53.

But of course Rohauer patched together a version of '25
out of outtakes which were supposed to be destroyed,
and Chaplin was then obliged to take legal action
against Rohauer to prevent the screening of this truly
illegitimate, but fairly accurate, version of '25.

Rohauer's concoction became the partial basis for all
serious reconstructions of _The Gold Rush_, including the
most recent one by Brownlow and Gill, of which it comprises
22%.

As for Uli's query, according to the Gill article Chaplin
had mostly used the same takes for '42 that he used in
'25, "but covered by the second camera." I suppose this
means that'25 is A footage and '42 is B footage, not the
other way around. However, he sometimes used entirely
different takes. The two versions of the roll dance are
not merely taken from different angles but from different
distances, and appear to be different takes, as is part of the
sequence of cooking the shoe, which Rick mentioned
a few weeks ago. And how do we reconcile this with
Gill's other statement that Rohauer reconstructed the
film from outtakes--which of course he would have had
to do if the original negative was destroyed in the
forties? Or were they not outtakes from '25, but
outtakes from '42-in which case Chaplin did not
destroy them in the forties, but decided to let
them be destroyed in '53.

Jeffrey no doubt knows more, and if he doesn't
respond to this post I'll e-mail him again.

Connie K.
--
"Our century is inconceivable without its . . . inconclusive mob of isms."

Constance Kuriyama wrote...

> I took Jeffrey Vance up on his invitation to e-mail him, and
> asked him some questions about the two versions of _The
> Gold Rush_.
>
> According to Jeffrey, Chaplin was so convinced that his
> re-issue was the version of the film that would please
> future audiences that he destroyed the negatives of '25
> after the success of the reissue was apparent.
>
> I can hear you gasp. But bear in mind Jeffrey's observation
> that Chaplin was not an archivist or a film historian.


But Chaplin *was* an archivist of his own films. He saved the
unreleasable "Sea Gulls," he saved out-takes from the old Mutual days,
he saved odds and ends like "How to Make Movies," but he went out of
his way to destroy the negs of "The Gold Rush"??

That just doesn't add up for me. I'd have to hear it confirmed by
Shepard or Robinson before I'd buy that one.



--Shush--