The Kid (1921)

The Kid is an American film comedy-drama first released in 1921, directed by Charles Chaplin.  The film stars Charles Chaplin, Jackie Coogan, Edna Purviance, Carl Miller and Albert Austin.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Extreme personal circumstances drive a young woman to abandon her newborn baby.  The infant is discovered by a solitary tramp who decides to adopt it.  Five years on, the child and his surrogate father have formed a professional partnership – the boy goes around smashing windows, the tramp then turns up to replace all of the broken windows.  One fateful day, the child falls ill and the tramp has no recourse but to call in a doctor.  The tramp is distraught when the doctor tells him that the boy must be put into the care of those who are better qualified to look after him...

The Kid, the most personal and poignant of Charlie Chaplin’s films, grew out of one of the most emotionally turbulent phases of the actor-director’s career.  Chaplin had recently married the 17-year old actress Mildred Harris, only to discover that they had nothing in common.  As a result of this intellectual mesalliance, Chaplin was struck by an acute creative block and was unable to come up with new ideas for the films he was contractually obliged to make for First National.  Ironically, the thing that lifted him out of this creative impasse was the tragic loss of his first-born son, who died three days after he was born.  Within a fortnight of this personal disaster, Chaplin had his idea for a new film – his famous Little Tramp would team up with an orphan boy in a story which would evoke painful memories of his own childhood.   

Chaplin always chose the actors for his films carefully but he took particular care in casting his co-star in The Kid.  He finally settled on Jackie Coogan, the five-year-old son of a pair of musical hall entertainers.  What most attracted the director to Coogan was that the child was a born mimic, capable of imitating perfectly any expression that Chaplin showed him.  Chaplin could not have found a better co-star for this film than young Jackie Coogan.  They were two of a kind.  The boy’s father, Jack Coogan, appears in the film in several small parts, including the pickpocket and the Devil.

Originally intended as a two-reel short, The Kid gradually evolved into something more substantial, ending up as a six-real feature.  Chaplin’s increasing perfectionism, coupled with problems in his personal life, resulted in the film taking almost a year to complete.  Chaplin’s insistence on shooting scenes over and over again until they were exactly as he had envisaged them meant that he would shoot more than fifty times the length of film in the final picture.  

By the time the filming had been completed, Chaplin had become estranged from his wife Mildred and had filed for divorce.  Anxious that her lawyers might seize the film stock for The Kid along with his other assets, Chaplin and his closest associates fled California with the raw negatives and undertook the job of editing the film in absolute secrecy, in a hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah.

When The Kid was released in 1921, it was an immediate success around the world, becoming the second highest grossing film of the year.  This was Chaplin’s first major box office hit and the first of his great full-length films.  It is often credited as being the first film to combine comedy and drama, providing a template for most of Chaplin’s subsequent films.  The film has inspired many future filmmakers and its influence can be seen, for example, in Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948).

The Kid transformed the fortunes of Jackie Coogan overnight.  Aged 7 when the film was released, he instantly became a world famous celebrity.  He would enjoy a brief, highly lucrative, film career, but this fizzled out when he reached the age of 13.  As a young man, Coogan was penniless, thanks to the mismanagement of his childhood earnings by his mother and stepfather.  It was Jackie Coogan’s well-publicised and nearly ruinous lawsuit again his parents that led the state of California to introduce the Coogan Act, which gave protection to child performers.  After WWII, Coogan returned to acting, playing character roles.   In the 1960s, he would find fame as Uncle Fester in the popular television series The Addams Family.

The Kid introduced another character into Chaplin’s complex and turbulent private life: Lita Grey.   Appropriately, Grey played the temptress in the film’s dream sequence, made up to look 18 even though she was only 12 at the time.  Chaplin was besotted with the young actress and would cast her as the female lead in his later film The Gold Rush (1925).  Things did not go as planned, however.  Having put Grey in the family way, Chaplin felt obliged to marry her and gave her part in the film to another actress.  This second marriage would prove to be as disastrous as Chaplin’s first.

Whilst the The Kid is not as polished and as technically sophisticated as Chaplin’s subsequent films, it is easily one of the director’s most emotionally involving works, and without the treacly sentimentality that would mar his later films.  The emotional high point is the sequence where social workers attempt to take the child away from the tramp.  There is something viscerally brutal in the way the tramp and the boy are separated, and we are reminded of the fact that Chaplin himself was separated from his mother when he was just seven years old, to be placed in a home for destitute children.  Chaplin never would forget his past.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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