Dan Navarro's Movie Reviews

The Kid (1921) has been, rightly, called Charlie Chaplin's first masterpiece. It was his first time at bat as producer of a full-length picture, and he hit this one out of the park.

Chaplin was, of course, the multi-talented actor, writer, director, composer, and all-around genius who became an internationally renowned star in only his first year in films, 1914. Usually appearing in his tramp costume of baggy pants, a derby, outsized shoes, and a cane, Chaplin was loved by audiences in every country that had a movie theater or a nickelodeon. In 1921, with 70 short films already on his résumé, he got the opportunity to make his feature debut as both director and star, and gave us The Kid. It was the first film to effectively combine humor and drama, telling us in an opening title: "A comedy with a smile—and perhaps a tear."

Edna Purviance plays a desperate unwed mother, abandoning her new baby boy. She places him in the back seat of a parked limousine, hoping the obviously wealthy owner will find the infant and take good care of him. But after she leaves, thieves steal the car and drive it away. Finding themselves inadvertent kidnappers, the thieves drive to a slum neighborhood and deposit the baby in a back alley.

Now a tramp (Chaplin) strolls onto the scene, finds the baby, and—after a lengthy comic sequence during which he tries desperately to get rid of the child, only to be thwarted at every turn—decides to keep the baby and raise it himself.

Five years pass, and now the child is Jackie Coogan in a ragamuffin cap and Chaplinesque baggy pants. The two have attained a father/son relationship, and we see that the tramp has done okay by the lad. Jackie is housed (in a dingy attic room), clothed, and fed regularly by his "father."

In the interim years, Edna has prospered as a professional singer. Carrying the burden of guilt for her long-ago transgression, she spends time doing charity work; and in that pursuit, she chances to visit the run-down neighborhood where the tramp and the kid live. Without realizing it, she spends time chatting with her own son.

One day, the child takes ill, and a doctor is called in to treat him. We don't much like the doctor's patronizing attitude towards his indigent patients, but one must make allowances. When the doctor asks Chaplin if he is the father, Chaplin tells him how he came to find the child, even shows him the very note that the mother had pinned to her baby's clothing, in the limousine all those years ago. The doctor arrogantly orders the child taken to an orphanage, and soon the authorities have come and forcibly separated the tramp and his "son."

What follows is a frenzied chase sequence in which Jackie is torn from the tramp's arms and penned in an orphanage truck, wails pitifully with arms outstretched towards his "father," and Chaplin responds by clambering across the neighborhood rooftops, pursuing the truck, jumping onto its bed and disabling its startled driver. He and the kid are together again... but for how long?

In The Kid, Chaplin combines comedy and pathos in sublime perfection. The scene where Jackie is taken from the tramp, and he pleads desperately to be taken back to him, is heartbreaking, because we seem not to be watching a young actor on the screen, but a real-life child whose life is being torn apart.

The ensuing rooftop chase, which ends with the tramp triumphing over "the system" and getting his little boy back, always elicits loud cheering from theater audiences. In the best tradition of great melodrama—and I don't use that word disparagingly—we are swept away in the story's flow. Chaplin has struck paydirt in this, his first independent feature... and what a glorious thing it is to know that he still had his best years as a filmmaker ahead of him. Still to come were the riches of The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), and the Academy Award-winning The Circus (1928).