A few weeks ago while attending a film festival tucked into the lovely crevices of a small, Croatian, hilltop town…I had an epiphany. Woody Allen is Charlie Chaplin. Roll your eyes, of course my discovory has been already discovered, of course, Variety, Salon, have already placed these two miniature, puppy-eyed, adorably nervous comedians side by side. However. Whilst watching 1925, “Gold Rush,” I understood the nuances of my beloved Allen films..in a different light. I understood what both these men were trying to do in a revamping of American comedy. I think.
In the film, Chaplin, plays a lone prospector venturing to Alaska in the search for gold. Snow, avalanches, burly men tangle him in brilliant comedic situations…and the lovely Georgia, a local bar women, further annimates and ignites Chaplin’s foppish ways. Slapstick humor runs rampant. He falls, he gets back up, he falls down again. But something else happens too. There is in brief moments…what I shall call “intellectual humor.” It’s ironic, it’s smart, it’s a bit uncomfortable..it’s Woody Allen.
Let’s take the end of “Gold Rush.” Chaplin ends up rich, on a boat, embracing Georgia, who now has suddenly taken interest him…..It’s not a perfect ending. It has all the elements, Girl, Boat, Money, Kissing…its just arranged slightly…off. This is the same construction of “Annie Hall”, of “Manhattan”, of “Midsummer Night’s Dream”( Chaplin was an avid reader of Shakespeare).
And this moment in comedy you need not only your eyes, to see someone banging into a wall, to see the pieces, “man, girl, kiss”… you need judgment, a mind, to understand that the pieces are not in order.