The Kid Review- By Michael Carlisle

 Title: The Kid
Year: 1921
Director: Charles Chaplin
Country: US
Language: English

Along with Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin was a master of comedy and an absolute genius at his craft. Chaplin began his comedy career in Vaudeville, then set out to work for the self proclaimed "King of Comedy" Mark Sennet at The Keystone Film Company in 1913. However, eventually he began to dislike the fact that he was making simplistic comedies with no real value, thus leaving the company and becoming his own director. He mostly made intelligent yet funny shorts until 1921, where he would embark on his first feature length film known as The Kid.

The opening title of the film reads: "A comedy with a smile--and perhaps a tear". As a woman named Edna leaves the charity hospital and passes a church wedding, Edna deposits her new baby with a pleading note in a limousine and goes off to commit suicide. The limo is stolen by thieves who dump the baby by a garbage can. Charlie the Tramp finds the baby and makes a home for him. Five years later Edna has become an opera star but does charity work for slum youngsters in hope of finding her boy.

Many regard The Kid as Chaplin's first silent masterpiece. It is an emotionally powerful tearjerker with a lot of heart; a comedic film with a substantial amount of drama. Chaplin transcends the simplistic notion of what early 1920's comedy should be and takes it higher than any thought possible. It's quite groundbreaking in that sense, surely Chaplin should be thanked for the more emotionally complex comedies that we have seen throughout time

The Kid is an intense mixture of all the right ingredients to make a silent film star. Like always his gags are of perfection, even the most difficult of scenes can look quite fluid and natural. Though the parent-child relationship has proved sentimental in film, few formulas are as emotional as Chaplin's; the scene where the child is taken away from Chaplin is devastatingly powerful. Child actor Jackie Coogan greatly impresses me, usually you don't get such fantastic acting from child actors, but he helped in making the film a believable success.

In conclusion, though the films is imperfect, portraying the kid's mother as a Christ-like figure seems a bit silly & at times the story can be too melodramatic, overall it is a very important and entertaining film that stands the test of time. There are very few films that will stir your soul as much as this one does. Praise it! 4.5/5