Everyone knows who Charlie Chaplin is – his demeanor and appearance ripe with comical antics and filled with recognizable attributes – but have you ever actually watched him on-screen? In addition to staring, Chaplin wrote and produced. It was also his directorial debut for a feature length production
“The Kid” is a silent picture that relies on the performer’s visual behavior and a handful of title placards and a score plays throughout that’s not as obnoxious as others of the era but tiresome nonetheless. Chaplin’s physical comedy is what makes him such an enigmatic performer, and it’s easy to see the influence he had on comics of today’s generation (Michael Richards and Jim Carry quickly came to mind). Here, Chaplin employs his trademark character known as The Tramp, a goofball who finds an orphaned baby and raises him as his own.
There’s a certain uncanny quality to the way the movie is filmed, black and white of course and that unsettling speed that lets you know it’s something from deep within the boundaries of yesteryear. The Tramp character is amusing as he at first attempts to pass the baby off to various passerby’s before training the young child to work with him as a con artist. A neighborhood policeman serves as a foil and it’s the type of humor one may expect but it works. A pair of bungling carjackers (I was stunned that this was even a thing in 1921) and a hilarious boxing match between The Tramp and a local thug are parts that will make you laugh out loud, or in the case of the silent era, LOL.
As a lover of history and in particular, cinema history, I was fascinated with the movie from an analytical and observational standpoint alone. To see Charlie Chaplin as an actual movie star is something all cinephiles should do. That Chaplin is able to seamlessly tell a fairly complex story without a single word of dialogue is a statement to how masterful of an artist he truly was, and as I watched the hour long movie the question continually came to mind – what would or could he accomplish if he were around in today’s world?
“The Kid” is 100 years old and as such, doesn’t have monstrous special effects or dynamic nonlinear storylines. It’s a fun slice of cinematic history and offers a great window into the star power of a legendary performer.
