Minutes into the screening of The Gold Rush—a film I’d seen before, but not for years—I realized something was wrong. The Tramp: lost and alone in The Yukon’s white wastes, in search of his vein of gold, wasn’t wearing a proper jacket. He would freeze.
It’s a joke, of course; one of dozens in Charlie Chaplin’s third full-length directorial effort. And it’s a strange one. Chaplin’s Tramp, a globally famous character, wore the same beat up, baggy, repurposed clothes in nearly every film, but most of those films were set in warm urban environments, where being underdressed is forgivable, and occasionally wise. Up in the mountains, it’s real dumb. And the Tramp isn’t dumb.
