Examples Of Melodrama In The Gold Rush

Many films of the silent movie era are melodramas, which was a term used back then purely as a descriptive word to describe a movie and not a ‘negative’ term the way we use the term today. Chaplin’s film is a melodrama that invokes the emotions of his audience. Some elements of melodrama are present in Chaplin’s film The Gold Rush, the characteristics of a melodrama aid in analysing how melodramatic a silent movie is. An element of melodrama is, a situation - an occurring conflict in the film created by the screenwriter to evoke an intense emotional response from the viewers. For example, in a scene from the film The Gold Rush” the protagonist, The little fellow and his friend Big Jim are in a cabin which has been blown off to the edge of

The audience at this scene will worry about the safety of The little fellow, will he fall or be rescued in the nick of time before the cabin tips over the edge. The mixed emotions of fear and anxiety were what I felt watching this scene, and couldn't help cheering when The little fellow was saved at the last possible minute before the cabin fell over the edge. Another element of melodrama is raw emotion, the terrible suffering of the protagonist that provokes an emotional response from the audience. An example of this from The Gold Rush is a scene where The little fellow and Big Jim are in the cabin caught up in a snowstorm, they have no food and are hungry. To survive, they eat The little fellow’s shoe, but Big Jim is tired of starving, begins to hallucinate and think The little fellow is a big chicken that he wants to eat. This scene although humorous touches on the reality of what the gold rushers faced, the extreme pangs of hunger that might have lead to the gold rushers becoming delirious. The scene presents to the audience the pure emotion of the gold rushers portrayed by the actors. Chaplin’s film The Gold Rush is fairly melodramatic because it does not feature all the elements of