The Kid

My next project on the Criterion Channel is to catch up with Charles Chaplin movies I haven't seen. He didn't make that many features, and that there are so many I haven't gotten to is criminal. I start with his very first feature, released in 1921, The Kid.

Most people have seen images from The Kid, even if they haven't seen the film. It stars Chaplin as his Little Tramp character, and Jackie Coogan as the title child. Their ragged clothes and determined expressions adorn many famous stills from the film. But I had never actually seen it all the way through.

A woman leaves a charity hospital. The title card says, "her only sin, motherhood." Clearly she is a single mother, and after carrying her baby around for a while, decides to put him in the back seat of a fancy car, along with a note that reads she wishes he be cared for (most women left their babies on doorsteps, but this was the new age of the auto). The car gets stolen, and the thieves leave the baby beside a trash can, where Chaplin finds him. At first he tries to get rid of him, putting him in another baby carriage, but then decides to keep him.

Five years later, the pair are inseparable. They live in shabby surroundings, but eat good (Chaplin serves them both some stew, and it looks good). They have a scam going--Coogan breaks windows with rocks, and Chaplin, a glazier, comes by and gets the replacement business. But Coogan gets sick, and the doctor reports this arrangement to the authorities.

Then comes the most famous scene in the film, when Coogan is taken away (and emotes something fierce, reaching out with grabbing hands, crying hard) and Chaplin runs across rooftops, chased by a policeman. This was done on real rooftops, mostly along Olivera Street, which is today a tourist attraction (kind of like a Mexico-town).

Of course the mother will eventually be reunited with her son, but will also accept Chaplin into their homes (he is brought there by the very same policeman, now a friend).

The Kid was a huge success. It is only about an hour long, which is just about right. There are a few comic set pieces, such as the glass business and then a scene in which Coogan gets into a fight with another boy and Chaplin battles his goon brother. There is also a weird scene at the end in which Chaplin dreams about a paradise where everyone has angelic wings, but devils get inside to ruin things. They whisper to a young girl (Lita Grey) to "vamp" Chaplin. Grey was only 12 (!) at the time, and three years later would have an affair with Chaplin (like many great artists, Chaplin had his demons, and his was young girls). She got pregnant and they married so he wouldn't get arrested.

Aside from this scene, The Kid is terrific. Chaplin's films are very sentimental, of course, and the tone can edge dangerously close to maudlin, but not go overboard. Coogan, who would become famous again forty years later as Uncle Fester on The Addams Family, would prompt legislation after his mother and step-father squandered his earnings. Today the Child Actor law is known informally as the Coogan Act.

Chaplin would use the tramp character many more times, and each time one can't but feel the emotions behind the character--the resilience, the optimism, and the love--despite the overwhelming despair of the surrounding times. And in 1921 things were relatively good in America, but there were still masses of people living in poverty. Chaplin, perhaps not so subtly, shows this in The Kid, and the good efforts of those who want to help, and the bad efforts of the government (the agents sent to fetch Coogan care nothing about him).

Next up, The Circus.