the screen

The Gold Rush. Perhaps no other film is so lighthearted and yet so moving. Charlie Chaplin's story of a lone prospector during the Alaska gold rush is based on pantomime of amazing finesse: Chaplin's direction exemplifies flawless subordination of camera and technique to the subject's subtleties. Many of Chaplin's most famous scenes are found here: the dance of the rolls. Big Jim McKay thinking Chaplin a chicken. Chaplin's delight at the smile Georgia meant for another man. Every scene, even every slapstick gag, contributes to the film as a whole--that's one reason Chaplin stands so far above other silent comedians, 1925.

Treasure of the Sierra Madre. John Huston's finest, most vivid film portrays three bums propsecting for gold in Mexico. Based on a novel by a mysterious Mexican author, B. Traven, the story is an adventure weaved so tightly it becomes allegory. But such a description hides the style of the film. Its portraiture, not just of characters but of Tampico and the bum's life, is as skillful as could be, and the mood ranges from harsh humiliation of Bogart by Alfonso Bedoya, the bandit chief, to dreamy paradise that Walter Huston finds, 1947.