City of Gold

The National Film Board of Canada produced this 32 minute 1957 film that was nominated for an Academy Award for Live Action Short, one of two shorts produced by the National Film Board of Canada in this category. Using shots of still photographs and a voice-over narration, it tells the story of Dawson City, a mining town during the Klondike Gold Rush. It's a fascinating look back at an era long gone and little remembered. Well worth tracking down. It was the first film to use an animation stand to concentrate on details of still images and move around within the frame for dramatic effect. It is the direct ancestor of Ken Burns documentaries. Turner Classic Movies ran this once as part of a celebration of the NBC's 60th anniversary a few years back.

As with many of its films in the 1950s, the National Film Board again has a golden touch. The film was one of two NFB films nominated for the 1957 Academy Award in the Short Subject category. (The other was Norman McLaren's A Chairy Tale.)

Using archival photographs of the period, filmmakers Colin Low and Wolf Koenig turn City of Gold into a cinematic scrapbook of the era. This is the summer of 1898, when Dawson City became the base of operations for thousands of gold-seekers in the Klondike.

The film owes much of its impact to its innovative moving-camera technique. The camera roams over the photographs, giving us the feel of living history. Things seem to still be alive, happening now as we watch. This technique is a forerunner of what later became known as the Ken Burns Effect.

Several of the photographs have become part of the gold rush's visual history, particularly those of Eric A. Hegg, who gave the Klondike its famous shot of a long line of prospectors climbing Chilkoot Pass.

Narrator Pierre Berton looks back with a mixture of both regret and affection. The hindsight of history has not turned our narrator unsympathetic or critical - no harsh judgment, no scorn, no melodramatic sentiment. There may even be some admiration here for the foolhardy willfulness of the human spirit.

Well worth a look. City of Gold is a short companion piece to Berton's history Klondike, published in 1958. It may also bring to mind Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush, made thirty years earlier and which, despite the obvious comedy, presents a much harsher picture of the Klondike era.

The first few scenes illustrate a town that little resembles the famed towns of the gold rush. Dawson City as it now is has a restaurant where people drink coffee with saucers under their cups under the gaze of a picture of The Queen on the wall. Now, all of the frenzy has gone and much of this place is abandoned and derelict. Nature is reclaiming the land so hastily claimed from it seven decades earlier - even the old railway engines and steam boats lie abandoned and untouched. Back in the 1890s, though, over one hundred thousand opportunists turned up expecting to make it rich - and the variety of photographs shown here remind us of just how ill-equipped many were for the wintery conditions this terrain could generate. 70 feet of snow fell in just one year whilst the would-be pan-handlers lived in huge tented villages building handmade boats. What was even more remarkable was the lack of violence. Apparently not one single murder took place during the whole excavation period! There is not a lot of moving imagery here, but the lively score and informed narration, as well as the diverse selection of pristine and informative images shows us just how tough life was for those looking for that all-important "paystreak", and of just how many left with nothing, bankrupt and broken. At $5 for a glass of milk, it's not hard to understand why.

This short was nominated for an Academy Award for Live Action Short, one of two shorts produced by the National Film Board of Canada in the category. Using largely shots of still photography and a voice-over narration, it tells the story of Dawson City, a mining town during the Klondike Gold Rush. It's a fascinating look back at an era long gone and little remembered. Well worth tracking down. Turner Classic Movies ran this once as part of a celebration of the NFBC's 60th anniversary a few years back. Recommended.

This Canadian two-reel documentary was an Oscar nominee (albeit in the Live Action Short Subject category) and is even favourably reviewed in the "Leslie Halliwell Film Guide". While opening in a contemporary setting, we are eventually taken back by narrator Pierre Berton to the days of his father as a prospector in the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush. Interestingly, while the modern footage is captured by a moving camera, the past is effectively represented via a succession of stills – relating the trials and tribulations of the people who came from afar to make a fortune but who, we are told, sometimes lost it after a while or even lost interest in pursuing it further once they settled in a community that would soon thrive and become an established city! All in all, the film makes for a vivid and nicely-detailed look at the pioneering spirit. Incidentally, co-director Koenig was featured as an actor in Norman McLaren's Oscar-winning short NEIGHBOURS (1952), which I watched a day prior to this one.