The Kid Review

The Kid opens on a title card promising a picture with a smile and perhaps a tear, the first time Chaplin tried for both at feature length. He had lost an infant son shortly before production began, and the tenderness between the Tramp and the foundling he raises is the most personal thing he had filmed. The domestic comedy is wonderful: a coffee pot rigged as a feeding bottle, and a family business in which the boy breaks windows so his guardian can stroll past, glass on his back, and fix them.

Jackie Coogan is the reason the film lasts. He plays grief and mischief with no stage-school cuteness, and when orphanage men wrestle him onto a truck while the Tramp races across the rooftops after him, the comedy stops for a full minute and the film is better for it. The title cards are few and plain.

It runs 68 minutes in its original cut, and the weak spot is a late dream of the slum turned into heaven, full of angels and devils, which stalls the story just before its finale. Chaplin trimmed it to 53 minutes for a 1972 reissue with his own score, cutting scenes he found too sentimental. Either way it is the template for everything he did next.