Year: 1921
Director: Charles Chaplin
Writer: Charles Chaplin
Cinematographer: Roland Totheroh
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Jackie Coogan, Baby Hathaway, Carl Miller
Running Time: 68 min.
By 1918, Charlie Chaplin was abandoning the standard two-reel silent comedy short format for longer subjects of three reels in length. Although ready to make the move into feature films, he had no specific story in mind when he happened to see young Jackie Coogan performing in a vaudeville act at the Orpheum in Los Angeles. Afterward, Chaplin still didn’t know what his film would be, but he knew that it would showcase Coogan.
The resulting feature, The Kid, was one of the great successes of silent cinema, cementing Chaplin’s reputation as the screen’s most popular artist, and establishing Coogan as the pre-eminent child star of the era. It is not Chaplin’s masterpiece – that honor is divided in critical consensus between The Gold Rush (1925) and City Lights (1931) – yet this film has retained its appeal to audiences of all age groups.
The comedy sequences are as deft as any ever put on the screen, the story strong but simple, the short running time allowing few diversions or excesses (even though Chaplin shot a purported 200,000 feet of film over a near-six month shooting schedule). But it is the drama, not the comedy, of the reunion scene between kid and tramp that makes The Kid a classic, with Chaplin embracing Coogan in an iconic silent film moment every bit as recognizable today as Harold Lloyd dangling from the hands of a clock or Valentino dancing the tango.
Chaplin’s films recently have been undergoing restoration at various archives with the cooperation of the Chaplin estate, and it is the original release version of The Kid that is screening at the festival, with live music by Matt Marshall, on piano, and Reel Music Ensemble violinist Elizabeth Levergage. The music is based on the score he recently composed for the reelclassicdvd.com release of The Kid.
