The Kid (1921): Chaplin’s Classic Comic Melodrama Newly Restored (Review)

Over a century after its initial release, Charlie Chaplin’s debut feature, The Kid, is released in a new 4K digital restoration by Criterion. Initially released as part of his eight picture deal with First National Exhibitors, The Kid built off the prolific number of short comedies he’d been making since 1914. Playing his already established persona The Tramp, Chaplin stars alongside the titular kid (an astonishingly charismatic Jackie Coogan) who he adopts after being abandoned by his mother as a newborn.

This abandonment is the strikingly sombre opening scene of the film as the Woman (as she is referred to) is turned out of a charity hospital for the “sin of motherhood.” The abandoned baby is discovered by Chaplin’s Tramp who then tries to offload it as quickly as he can. Beneath the farcical slapstick of this sequence, there is a harsh political point being made about treatment towards those deemed unwanted by society. The child is not accepted by anyone and if not for dramatic convenience, there is no illusion that the child might have died alone.

With a five year jump there is also a jump in tone as the Tramp and his now adopted Kid scrape by smashing windows and fixing them for a fee. Again, hardship is filtered through comedy that gets increasingly more fantastical. The Tramp discovering a hole in his blanket allows him to create a poncho-style outfit out of it. This sort of comedic ingenuity are Chaplin’s bread-and-butter by this stage in his career and these sorts of scenes remain as joyful to watch as ever.

But Chaplin never relents in his political pursuit, arguably to a simplistic degree but no less effective for it. An innocuous encounter with a superhuman bully who can knock bricks out of walls and bend lampposts is sharply contrasted by the subsequent scene of the Tramp desperately fighting officials from the orphan asylum, who are taking the Kid away from him. These scenes are both depicted in a comicly exaggerated style, but the emotional tones are severely different in terms of the level of threat and the dramatic stakes. Coogan crying in the back of a lorry as he is helplessly taken away is a heartbreaking sight that allows some realism to break through the comedy.

Amazingly for a film so old, it has deleted scenes as Chaplin re-edited the film for its 1972 re-release and redesigned the intertitles. It is this version that has been restored but the cut scenes are also included, without a soundtrack. They all focus on “the Woman”, played by Edna Purviance, and provide more motivation for her feelings of regret, and so demonstrating how the focus of the final film is on the Tramp and the Kid’s relationship. Considering the film runs to less than an hour, it is a shame that they were cut, especially as the scene of her accidentally meeting the man who abandoned her with the child is a brilliant emotionally charged scene. Nevertheless, that these scenes have been preserved, along with the 1921 intertitles, on this disc is worth celebrating.

There is plenty of other historical context provided by this release’s supplements, from anecdotes to artefacts. There are several archival interview with people who worked on the film, including the Kid himself Jackie Coogan, who aptly describes Chaplin as “a man of instant emotion.” We can see this ourselves in archival footage from both ends of his life, from a newsreel from 1921 documenting Chaplin’s first return to the UK after moving to the US and causing the streets to be swarmed with fans like an early form of Beatlemania and up to a clip of Chaplin composing a new score for The Kid in 1971 at 82 years old, commanding the respect of all in attendance while remaining self-deprecating.

The inclusion of ‘Nice and Friendly’, a short released in the same year as The Kid, reunites Chaplin and Coogan but is otherwise not worthy of much note beyond historical interest and completism. And it’s fair enough really, as Chaplin made it as a wedding present for Lord and Lady Louis Mountbatten, who also perform in the film along with presumably their close friends. The use of rhyming couplets for the intertitles are a clear sign of how silly and slight it is, but it is great to see a film of friends having fun making a short film and reminds us that no matter how canonised filmmakers can be, they are still people who enjoy filmmaking.

There are plenty of supplements that emphasise how much talent is on display in The Kid, from Chaplin historian Charles Maland’s comprehensive audio commentary to Lisa Haven and Ben Model’s pieces on Coogan and Chaplin respectively. Model is particularly revelatory about how gags were created by shooting film at a slow speed knowing that it will be sped up when projected. Such attention to detail for the sake of entertainment demonstrates why Chaplin retains such appeal. In the end, the tagline for The Kid, “A picture with a smile – and perhaps, a tear,” sums up why this film remains a classic – it is emotionally driven story telling designed for a mass audience and as such it will always remain timeless.

Mike’s Archive: the Kid (1921)