Date Seen: 5/16/17
Score: 5/5
DIRECTOR: Charlie Chaplin
PRODUCER: Charlie Chaplin
STUDIO: Charles Chaplin Productions
SCREENPLAY: Charlie Chaplin
CINEMATOGRAPHY: R.H. Totheroh
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| Let's just say that this seemed a lot more appropriate at the time.... |
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| Chaplin as a fallen angel |
Did I love Chaplin's The Kid, arguably one of the greatest silent films ever made? You're damn right I did. Let's face it: Charlie Chaplin was, outside of Buster Keaton in everything he ever made and Donald O'Connor in Singin' In The Rain, one of the funniest and most impressive physical comics who ever lived. While The Kid doesn't make a point to showcase the limits of Chaplin's physical comedy skillset, it demands out of him the requirements of any effective silent film, while also allowing him to demonstrate his genuine acting chops. The Kid begins with a pretty famous title card that promises a dramady:
While I did not shed "a tear" during this film, I definitely grinned almost the entire way through. Not only is Chaplin so iconic that it's basically impossible to see him as the Little Tramp and not just marvel in awe of seeing him in action, but he delivers a pretty heartwarming performance. Let's not forget that The Kid is basically a movie about a man who is forced into becoming a single father, but in the unique circumstance in which it's basically nobody's fault except his own. Sure, the circumstances surrounding the Tramp's foray into fatherhood are... well, questionable... I mean, the guy stumbles upon a baby and puts in about five minutes of trying to find someone else to deal with it before just giving up and deciding to raise it himself. It's a relatable plight for any lazy person. It's like when you drop food on yourself while eating at a computer and you make enough effort to try to gyrate it off of you, but then give up and just let it become a third leg. Except this is a real-ass child. Like, he could take Jackie Coogan to the orphanage, which requires effort..... oooorrrrrr, he could just let the baby live with him until it's a grown up.
I am not unfamiliar with the genre of film that's basically man/men tries to raise child... will he succeed, or will everyone die? Hollywood loves this genre. It's one of those storylines that tricks audiences into thinking it's harmless and/or progressive by convincing them that what they're doing is laughing at the incompetence of men, which is somehow supposed to affirm the superiority of women, while what they're actually doing is reaffirming the stereotype that women are the only ones cut out for the care-taking role, and that men might actually burn down the house/lose the baby/get into ridiculous shenanigans when forced to take on a fatherly role. Chaplin's film does not play into this stereotype of incompetent fathers. This is no Honey, I Shrank The Kids. This is more like Honey, You Abandoned Your Kid And I Took Care Of Him Like A Grown-Ass Adult Until You Were Ready To Be A Parent. Chaplin's Tramp is funny, and he certainly ushers his surrogate son into an unsavory world of trickery and street-fighting (which is comparatively wholesome in a contemporary context), but he's also a pretty responsible and loving parent. After all, this is a picture with a laugh and, perhaps, a tear. We have been explicitly warned of the Tramp's capabilities. He certainly takes on a huge responsibility when he decides to raise the abandoned infant rather than attempt to put it in a random baby carriage on the street and risk being beaten by an angry mother's umbrella. He and the Kid really build up an admirable bond, and it's, in academic terms, frickin' adorable how much they care for each other.
It's a little too convenient, of course, that the mother of the abandoned Kid should become a famous actress and figure out her lost child's identity so easily, but it's forgivable. If anything, the most troubling part of the film (not counting the creepy angel dream montage), is the ending, which leaves the Kid separated from the man who raised him for the first five years of his life. Now living at his famous mother's mansion, he is visited by the Tramp, but it's unclear what the circumstances are. The film ends rather abruptly, and the viewer is supposed to be pleased by the relatively painless ending, in which the Kid isn't stuck as a ward of the state and Chaplin is able to see him and the actress is happy to finally have her child back, but it's unsatisfying knowing that the Tramp can only see the Kid sometimes. Holy shit, this movie is leaving off where Boyhood begins... Pretty soon he'll only be seeing the Tramp on weekends and they'll go bowling together and it'll be really pathetic.
An interesting tidbit to note about The Kid is that it was, like many of Chaplin's films, basically his kid. He was responsible for almost every facet of its creation. He wrote it, directed it, produced it, starred in it, edited it, and even wrote the damn musical score for it (which you can hear in the 1971 re-released edition, which is the most common version available today). Basically the only thing this man didn't do was the cinematography, but you know as director he was responsible for the bulk of the film's mis-en-scène, and knew what he wanted the shots to look like. This! Man! Could! Get! It!
End of the story: The Kid is adorable, and pure Chaplin magic. It is, as promised, an original dramady, with both a smile and, perhaps, a tear.
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