Watch Chaplin's The Gold Rush and compare and contrast it with Keaton's The General. Think about everything you've learned thus far in terms of reading film. Discuss mise-en-scene, open/closed framing, kinesis, narrative, etc. Refer to your textbook if you need assistance with the vocabulary. Use at least one quote from the articles I gave you in your response.
Both films are available here:
The Gold Rush
The General
Due: Friday, 9/27
Buster Kenton’s “The General” and Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” are both considered to be masterpieces in their own respect, and though they are similar in some aspects, they also vary from one another in numerous ways. To start off, they are both silent films made around the same time about a seemingly less than competent hero achieving his goal, and winning his girl at the end of the narrative. This is about where the similarities end as these two films convey their narratives in completely different ways. One of the most noticeable differences between the two films is their varying kinesis. The General had an impressive amount of camera moment, especially when you take in consideration when it was made, while The Gold Rush is almost all static shots (with the exception of one or two shots). This plays into each of the lead actors’ strength, Chaplin’s movements are more exaggerated and animated (this can be seen in the scene where Georgia agrees to Chaplin’s New Year’s Eve dinner and Chaplin celebrates by jumping around the cabin) which would seem unbalanced if the camera moved a lot as well. Kenton on the other hand seems to play his role in a more realistic way with less exaggerated features and movements, as Joseph Milicia said in his review of The General, “The point has often been made that the camera in Chaplin’s films was used mainly to record the body or facial movements of its pantomime hero, while in Kenton’s film the comedy often depends on special placement of the camera…” This is displayed when Kenton’s love tells him to not return until he is in uniform, instead of overly expressive movements and facial features that displays sadness, Kenton sits down on the side of a train, and the camera follows him as the train slowly takes him through a tunnel ending the scene. The mise-en-scene of The General feels more put together and grander than The Gold Rush, this is due to the larger scale of the film. The General seems to do a better job at grabbing the audience into civil war America through its detailed costumes of civil war uniforms, to its utilization of props like the trains themselves, to the on location shooting of the daring train chases, everything in The General makes it seem more genuine than The Gold Rush which mostly takes place in cabins that are enclosed and feel like sets. The framing is generally more open in The General which complements its cross country train shots, while a majority of The Gold Rush is spent in cabins and houses (during snow storms which further develops the feeling of the characters’ entrapment) but it still has its fair share of open shots that allows the audience to view the snowy tundra that Chaplin is adventuring in. Both films deserve their own merit but I personally enjoyed The General much more than The Gold Rush. It is amazing that Kenton created a film almost one hundred years ago that feels so modern. With its revolutionary utilization of the camera, to its elaborate costume and set design, all paired with the absolute scale of it all, the only thing that ages this film is the fact that it is silent.
ReplyDeleteKeaton’s The General seemed like a much more modern film. This may have been the quality of the copy, one being a dvd and the other being a youtube video. Another way that it seemed modern was the acting, silent films of the day (such as Chaplin’s Gold Rush) had actors that were very over dramatic to get their points across. In both films much attention is payed to the setting and costumes. In The General, the director put in a great effort in to the films setting to create the surrounding of Civil War era america. In addition the on train shots were great, use of a crane or something of the sort was clever of Keaton. Chaplin’s simple set of the cabin as well as the landscapes was a pleasant mix of scenery. Costumes did a good job of portraying what environment each film took place in. In Keaton’s film all the men were dressed in union or confederate uniforms. While in the Gold Rush people were mostly dressed in warmer working mans clothes outside of the scantily clad women (demonstrating Chaplins view on women?). The closed framing of the shots in the cabin made us feel closed in and compressed, much like the characters were. While the open shots in Keaton’s film gave us a sense of freedom, as Jonnie Gray had seeing as he could travel wherever he wanted. Each film followed a good narrative, captivating the audience. The special effects of The General were far superior to those of Chaplins film. Keaton drove a train into a river where as in The Gold Rush Chaplin simply tilted his camera sideways. This may reflect on the budget of the films and not the film maker himself. “He seems like a modern visitor to the world of the silent clowns”. This was a great compliment said by Roger Elbert in his essay about The General. This put Keaton above any of the filmmakers of his day.
ReplyDeleteBuster Keaton's The General and charlie chaplin's The Gold Rush are both silent films from the 1920'swith goofy leads who tend to make fools of themselves. The General follows a railway engineer who is very serious, which seems to add to his goofy personality when he gets caught up in his own head and doesn't notice the events taking place around him. For example, "One famous sequence involves a cannon on a flat car, which Keaton wants to fire at the other train. He lights the fuse and runs back to the locomotive, only to see that the cannon has slowly reversed itself and is now pointed straight at him." In The Gold Rush, Charlie Chaplin does not play the role of a serious man. His character is goofy in how clumsy and spastic he is. Another factor is how desperate he is- not just for the love of Georgia, but just to stay alive. The scene where he pretends to be unconscious in front of another cabin to get a free breakfast is an example of this. He lies down in the snow and when the man living in the cabin comes out and sees him, he brings Chaplin into his home and feeds him breakfast and coffee and Chaplin asks for refills on them both until the man gets annoyed.
ReplyDeletePart of the contrast between the two films is their different mise-en-scenes. The General seems to have a more developed mise-en-scene, partly because it was such a large scale movie, unlike The Gold Rush. There were more people involved, especially due to the large groups. The soldiers from the North and the army from the South, and the people waiting in line to be enlisted were all large groups, each dressed for the occasion, and both groups of soldiers each had their own uniform, making the film more believable. In addition to that, the film ages well. Aside from the things that could not be helped- such as the film being silent and in black and white- it is still believeable today. Since it takes place during the civil war, the costumes and set design would look old anyway, but the plot and comedy would still entertain. The Gold Rush's mise-en-scene is also good, but since it wasn't as high quality of a film, the mise-en-scene is also not as high quality. The costumes show that Chaplin is not the average gold miner. While everybody else is wearing heavy clothes to keep themselves warm, Chaplin wears a suit throughout the film. In addition to that, he cooked one of his shoes for a Thanksgiving dinner and after that walked around with one shoe on and one foot tied up in cloth to keep it warm. That paired with his usual suit shows how strange he is, as well as how poor he is that he can't buy another pair of shoes. The decor shows that the miners don't have a lot of money, unlike the decor in The General which shows that Annabelle Lee does have a fair amount of money. The setting contributes greatly to their differences as well.The General takes place on a train, which for the most part is in constant motion, leading to long, open shots that suggest a world beyond the shot. In The Gold Rush, the majority of the film takes place inside small areas, due to the extreme cold in the film. Because of this, there is less kinesis and shots are mainly closed. At times though, the shot is outdoors which makes it more open, as viewers can see the world stretching out and nothing to hold the characters in the shot.
Buster Keaton’s The General and Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush were both produced during the same time period and shared similar main characters- a male underdog who ends up impressing the girl of his dreams as a bonus to the goal he originally intended to accomplish. Both of these men are at a physical disadvantage to those around them, but despite this, end up overcoming the obstacles presented to them just by perseverance and coincidence.
ReplyDeleteFor most of The General, the kinesis comes from the constant motion of the train through the outdoor scenery. Even while staying on the train, Johnnie covers a lot of area and is almost constantly in motion as well. In The Gold Rush, Charlie Chaplin uses exaggerated movements and often moves around in one relatively confined space as well (inside the cabins).
Both films focus on a loose idea of a “damsel in distress”. In The General Annabelle Lee was the only female character presented at all, whereas in The Gold Rush there were multiple women, although none of those characters were given a name besides Georgia.
The General used open-framing while The Gold Rush mostly employed closed-framing. Joseph Milicia says in his critique of The General, “It was shot mostly in Oregon, where the necessary narrow-gauge railroad tracks were still to be found. (Compare, for contrast, the studio look of Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, made at about the same time.)” The General used many more different angles than were in The Gold Rush. Because of its setting, Keaton was able to shoot from high and low angles and use a moving camera often. Chaplin’s setting was the Yukon, so most of his scenes were of snow, limiting the movement of the characters when they were outdoors. Because of this limited space within the studio, most of the kinesis is from the actors moving on screen and not from a moving camera.
Some extraordinary scenes in The General include trains going through a burning tunnel and going over/breaking through a burning bridge. The trains in these scenes were too heavy for them to have been staged and the camera manipulated. The train that falls through the bridge actually fell through, there was no trick photography used. In The Gold Rush, Chaplin creates the illusion of his main character turning into a chicken in Big Jim McKay’s imagination. He presumably stopped the camera with the “lone prospector” in the frame, and started the camera again with a man in a chicken suit in his place. Chaplin also uses parallel editing in the scene in which the cabin hangs over the edge of an abyss. Shots of a cabin hanging over the side of a snowy cliff (presumably a miniature version) are juxtaposed with shots of the interior of the cabin, with the camera on an angle.
The mise-en-scène of The Gold Rush includes harsh lighting of the main character and Georgia throughout the film. They are always shown in a light that is much too bright, distinguishing them from the other characters. Their costumes go along with the time period but they would be impractical for that type of climate.
Charlie Chaplin’s Gold Rush, and Buster Keaton’s The General, were both made in the mid 1920’s and resemble one another quite a bit. Both of the the films are silent films, and have plots based on love with a lot of comedy in them. They were both set in the mid eighteen hundreds, and were based on guys who’s actions were centered around a women they loved. However, with these few similarities there are many things that distinguish them. In Keaton’s film the main protagonist wants to gain love, and respect from his love interest, so he tries to become a soldier like she wants him to, setting off a series of events/ situations in which the comedy ensues. In Chaplin’s film it is more comedy driven, and his love interest isn’t brought in until later so that the protagonists’ relationships with others can be shown. The setting for The General is during the civil war, while the setting for The Gold Rush is during the gold rush. The setting that influenced the properties, and costume made them drastically different. Keaton’s film being more war orientated, used props like guns,and sabers, and the costumes were for the most part soldiers uniforms. With a train being a monumental part in the movie, a conductors uniform was used for costuming too, which was important in the development of Keaton’s character, as he rises from conductor to lieutenant. In Chaplin’s film the costumes were made to resemble people who weren’t expert miners and/ or excavators, they were meant to look like people searching for gold in hopes of becoming rich. In that sense they were alike, both had put a lot of detail in being historically accurate, while at the same time they had different settings, decor, and props. There was a lot of movement on screen in both films too, from both the main characters, and extras. However, the camera itself moved more in Keaton’s film, like the scenes that showed how close the train with union soldiers was getting to The General. The Gold Rush, didn’t have many moving shots with the camera, but it did implement special effects in a way with the shot of the two men trying to stay alive in the cabin as it teetered on the edge of a cliff. The shot made it seem like the floor of the cabin,and cabin itself were tilted, this technique(not that it needed to be), was not used in Keaton’s film. Also, both films used open framing quite a bit, because the characters are always interacting with their environment/ surroundings, and that is where most of the comedy happens in them as well. These films were the cornerstones for others after them, and its no wonder why they were good examples, as Roger Ebert said about Keaton’s films, “ They have such a graceful perfection, such a meshing of story, character and episode, they unfold like music”.
ReplyDeleteBuster Keaton’s “The General” and Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush share many characteristics but also are different in many ways. In terms of mise-en-scene, “The General” was much more captivating visually and through it’s meaning. I personally felt nearly as drawn into Keaton’s Civil War as I did D.W Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation”. The use of large countrysides, seemingly real (or real) villages, and real trains in “The General” captured me much greater than the cabin set of “The Gold Rush”. It also conveyed the free spirit and enjoyment that Keaton’s character gets out of driving his train and help to draw the viewer into the story. The almost always kinetic camera in “The General” compared to the nearly entirely static film of “The Gold Rush” showed much more of the mise-en-scene and captured much more action then Chaplin could’ve dreamed of. “The General” looked extremely modern for it’s time. When I first saw it I could’ve even assumed that it was a film made today like “The Artist”. The framing of “The General” of course was extremely open compared to that of “The Gold Rush”. It depicted landscapes and showed the full extent of houses, villages, and trains that were featured in the film. “The Gold Rush” seemed to focus much more on the comedy of facial expressions of characters and occasionally their entire bodies, as shown in the tilted house scene. Keaton did the same thing but in a different way. Keaton created a real character who was legitimate about his quest for love and serious but at times was caught in in comedic circumstances. For example the scene where he kicked and stepped on his girlfriend as well as the scene when he was on the turning train axle utilized a different approach to comedy that in my opinion was more real and much funnier. The funniest scene in my opinion was “One famous sequence [which] involves a cannon on a flat car, which Keaton wants to fire at the other train. He lights the fuse and runs back to the locomotive, only to see that the cannon has slowly reversed itself and is now pointed straight at him.” This scene seemed almost on accident it was so amazingly created and acted out. This sometimes was needed but at times was too much. Chaplin always seemed to be overacting in many of his scenes and trying to merely achieve a funny goofy guy for people to laugh at.
ReplyDeleteWhen in reference to plot, The General and The Gold Rush are not really all that similar at all. The Gold Rush is a story about a lonely prospector who falls in love, whereas The General is about a railroad conductor that will go to ridiculous lengths to impress/win the heart of a woman. So at least the love story aspect is the same. Comparing what the directors do, I would say that Keaton does a much better job of sucking in the viewer and manipulating their emotions, which wasn’t an easy task with silent films. At certain times The General has a great lack of acting skill and performance quality at times, but it is more than made up for with visual composition that does a great job of complimenting the tone of the narrative. The Gold Rush on the other hand, does nearly the exact opposite. Chaplin makes up for a fairly poor visual texture with great performance quality and a sense of theatricality that one could only expect Chaplin to pull off. The mise en scene in both films is established through lighting of the main characters and the settings. I found Keaton’s attention to costumes far superior to that of Chaplin which was a very strong overall contributor to the realism of the film. One way I connected the two films in my mind was the sad scenes. In Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, the sad scenes have a sense of desperation for pity. Keaton’s are a lot less dramatic and he always finds a way to turn the sadness around to round the film out with some comedic value. One scene where this is scene is when Johnnie Gray is upset and walks over to a train sits down and is taken away on a locomotive. Scenes like this help the audience to connect to and understand the plight of Johnnie Gray. “Buster Keaton was not so much the Great Stone Face so much as a man who kept his composure in the center of chaos.”
ReplyDeleteAt first glance, "The General" and "The Gold Rush" appear to be very similar films and are in some aspects. However, they are certainly quite different films. The most obvious difference lies in the mise-en-scene of the films. "The General" has a wide variety of mise-en-scene that was used to a great advantage. Keaton's film takes place mostly in and around trains. This allows for the train shots to be varied in the way they look and the scenery can change as the trains move on. By filming moving trains, Keaton's film takes place in the woods, plains, hills, rivers, and even confined military bases. When the protagonist moves through the different cars of the train, the mise-en-scene helps contribute to the film's realism. The camera shows Keaton and other characters doing actions inside of the cars on the trains as well as conducting on the outside and simultaneously outsmarting the antagonists. This causes open framing which gives real depth to the look and feel of the film. This is where Charlie Chaplin's film, "The Gold Rush", begins to differ from "The General". "The Gold Rush has a very unified feel to it. This is mainly because most of Chaplin's film is shot in interiors and with closed framing. Chaplin almost appears to be crowded by the small frames in the film. This forces most of the action to come from Chaplin himself whereas in "The General", the action comes from the trains and the obstacles that are in their way. Of course, Keaton is causing the action but the train is the real item of focus. Although Chaplin was playing a character with little room to move, he did a fantastic job with his physical comedy. As a stage performer, Charlie Chaplin was already skilled in the area of comedy that "The Gold Rush" required. His expertise in this is very prominent in the scene where Chaplin is using forks and two pieces of food to mime dancing. He is the only thing in view and his physical movements bring more than enough comedic value to make this scene entertaining. The clear similarity between the two is from a narrative standpoint. Joseph Milicia perfectly describes the type of story in his article about "The General", "...story formula: a young 'failure' finally displays prowess and wins the girl...." both films provide a similar story formula while maintaining unique plots.
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