The Kid

Cute and funny. It is difficult to say anything new from this movie or Charles Chaplin. He just delivers a complete story with a lot of different elements. Remarkable is also the performance of Jackie Coogan.

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Two Little Tramps

The most amazing thing about Charlie Chaplins The Kid is that it was released in January of 1921. That makes this film 100 years old! A century has gone by since it was made, released, and first viewed, and yet its still available to be appreciated anew today. The DVD print that I watched was in very good shape, the picture was great, and I felt that I was watching an important piece of cinema history.

However, The Kid is by no means one of my favorite Chaplin films. In fact, two out of my top three arent even silent films, but prime examples of Chaplins later work: Monsi...

An impoverished woman (Edna Purviance) feels compelled to abandon her child in the hope that he might find a better life - so she leaves him (with a short note) in the back of a car. The two men who find the little bundle don't want anything to do with him, so plonk him down behind some rubbish where de is discovered by the tramp (Charlie Chaplin). Now he's not that keen on children either, but the presence of an attentive policeman means can't just leave his new package in the pram of a woman nearby. Skip on five years and the two have become quite a formidable double act - the lad (Jackie Coogan) chucks stones at windows and his father-figure does the mending! Meantime, the mother finds success treading the boards and the boy's real fathe...