The Kid

I've always thought there's a great beauty and poignancy to the best slapstick comedies, even unsentimental ones like Keaton's "The General" or Laurel and Hardy's "Way Out West." The latter comedy has a scene where L&H perform a soft-shoe dance; it always brings me to tears. Why? Maybe physical comedy has the same kind of effect on me as a dance performance. Both art forms are very expressive; the fact that I'm laughing doesn't dilute the emotional charge.

One of many things that made Chaplin a genius was his understanding of how close slapstick is to pathos already. Why not marry the two things? That's what he did in some of his early short films, and that's what he does in this feature comedy. The Little Tramp finds an abandoned baby and raises him into boyhood. But the authorities find out and want to take little Jackie (Jackie Coogan) away. Meanwhile, the mother who abandoned him has since become a wealthy singer and doesn't know if she'll ever find out what became of him.

Jackie Coogan (about five in this film), with his charming manners, his talents as a mimic and his adeptness at physical comedy, is one of the all-time great child actors. Want more evidence of Chaplin's genius? Coogan doesn't steal the film from him. This is true even though Chaplin, as producer, star and director, makes every evident attempt to spotlight the boy's talents. Coogan is even better here than he is in his own vehicles, like "My Boy" and "Oliver Twist."

Chaplin's storytelling—even with the foolish sub-Dickensian plot twists, such as Jackie suddenly taking ill—deftly draws out the comedy and pathos for maximum effect. The individual scenes themselves are flawlessly constructed. The window-breaking scene, the flophouse scene, the dream sequence, the trying-to-get-rid-of-the-baby scene—they're perfect. Chaplin's celebrated pantomimic skills are examples of storytelling in themselves.

Want me to criticize something? How about those thudding attempts to link the mother with Jesus? But you know, I can't even complain about that. It's too sweetly naïve. And the movie as a whole is too good to allow us to sneer at the (very) few flaws.

One important note: children love this movie. Show it to them while they're young, and you'll make Chaplin fans of them. And that's better than their becoming fans of almost anything that's being peddled to them.

Chaplin plays the Tramp, who stumbles upon an abandoned baby, which he reluctantly raises. Five years later, he and the boy (Jackie Coogan) live a hard-scrabble life, but they have each other. When the child welfare department decides to take the boy, the Tramp takes him on the run, but some things are not meant to be. Also featuring Edna Purviance, Carl Miller, Lita Grey, and Jackie Coogan Sr.

Chaplin's patented mix of slapstick humor, honest humanity, and shameless sentimentality are put on fine display here. The running time is slight (the version I watched was 53 minutes), but it seems just about right. The story is simple, the characters are basic and no more than necessary to tell the tale. Jackie Coogan was easily one of the best child actors in the history of film, extremely adorable without being precious, and immensely talented. Chaplin would continue to grow artistically, but this is the bridge from his early, Mack Sennett-era silliness and his later, multi-dimensional masterworks.

While perhaps not as celebrated now as some of Chaplin's later features, "The Kid" is an excellent achievement and a thoroughly enjoyable film. Charlie and young Jackie Coogan make an entertaining and unforgettable pair, and there is a lot of good slapstick plus a story that moves quickly and makes you want to know what will happen. Chaplin also wrote a particularly good score for this one, and most of the time the music sets off the action very nicely.

While it's a fairly simple story, this is one of Chaplin's most efficiently designed movies. Every scene either is necessary to the plot, or is very funny for its own sake, or both. Except for Chaplin and Coogan, most of the other characters (even frequent Chaplin leading lady Edna Purviance) are just there to advance the plot when needed, and the two leads are allowed to carry the show, which they both do extremely well.

"The Kid" is also impressive in that, while the story is a sentimental one, it strikes an ideal balance, maintaining sympathy for the characters while never overdoing it with the pathos, which Chaplin occasionally lapsed into even in some of his greatest movies. Here, the careful balance makes the few moments of real emotion all the more effective and memorable.

This is one of Chaplin's very best movies by any measure. If you enjoy silent comedies, don't miss it.

A very poor woman (Edna Purviance) can't take care of her baby and therefore she puts him in the back of a car, hoping someone will take good care of him. By a coincidence the kid ends up in the arms of a tramp, played by Charlie Chaplin of course, and he finds a note that asks if someone will take care of the orphan child. The tramp takes the job and the story continues five years later.

We see how the tramp and the kid (now played by Jackie Coogan) live and love each other, how they have little sneaky plans to earn money, how they belong to each other. In the meanwhile the woman has become rich and when she does a little charity for the poor she meets the kid not knowing it is hers.

This is a great feature film with Chaplin as the tramp. He composed the music himself as well and it fits the story perfectly. The kid is very good and he does a great job in scenes where kids can easily overreact. There is one great sequence where the tramp is in dreamland and every single person is an angel. This could have been a great movie on its own. As the film says in the first seconds, 'The Kid' is good for a laugh and perhaps a tear.

Charlie Chaplin was perhaps the most innovative auteur of the silent era and certainly the most famous. His character, the Tramp, is now a cultural icon and will forever be a symbol of poverty and travesty that was American society in the early 20th century, but something all of us can overcome.

In one of his first roles with this character, he played opposite a very young Jackie Coogan, who would go on to play Uncle Fester in the cult TV series The Addams Family. Taking himself and this very talented young boy, Chaplin made a masterwork; one that he truly could call his own as he wrote, directed, starred in and composed the score for this film.

Here, Chaplin feeds to one of the most basic of all human desires: to care for a child and be needed and loved by one another. The Tramp finds an abandoned baby in an alley and in order to not be caught by a policeman he takes the child in as his own. He hasn't got much but he does have love, which is more than can be said for the child's mother.

Flash forward five years, and now the mother wants her son back. Circumstances arise and soon the Tramp is fighting for the right to keep his little companion. Even so, the story is thin but I believe Chaplin was going for something more deep and meaningful. This also gave him a chance to work on some different visual styles and comedic gimmicks, things not used much at the time in the movies. Using these little tricks and ideas, Chaplin creates a real persona not just for himself but also the supporting cast and involving us in the story.

However, at the heart of the story are the emotions about fighting for the right to be a parent/guardian; someone the kid can look up to and sleep beside and confide in. It tugs at your heart all while making you laugh, sometimes in the same scene. This shows the work of a true genius; someone who knew what he wanted to create and the style in which he wanted to portray it.