The Kid : Charlie Chaplin

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When I was reading the heart-wrenching descriptions and narrations from Charlie Chaplin’s My Autobiography [1964], my eyes just froze at the line, “There were patches everywhere, on the elbows, trousers, shoes and stockings.” [4] Afterward, While I was watching Chaplin’s “The Kid” (1921), I found a verisimilar costumes and moods & expressions on the faces of the Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) & the Kid (Jackie Coogan) who is the one of the most expressive child artist I have ever seen.

 

It is beyond doubt that no other filmmakers than Charlie Chaplin could, as far as I know, apply and make art from the autobiographical extractions so elegantly and truthfully. I could barely differentiate the deep feeling of vulnerability a single mother could have when I saw the mother (Edna Purviance) who abandoned his newborn baby both being deserted by her man, the artist and being burdened because of child’s identity and economic destitution with Charlie’s mother who had to send Sydney, the elder brother to earnings and Chaplin to charity house. The Kid doesn’t just show us how to make a beautiful film but defines the essence of film.

 

In the beginning of The Kid, an intertitle, “A picture with a smile—and perhaps, a tear” reverberates the pragmatic spectrum of human life. One can get bliss and happiness behind the curtain of sadness and crudeness. The surviving mechanisms of the Tramp and the Kid are rudimentary in nature not only in the advent of 20th century but even in our living times. The bonding between two beings developed through their shared lives are priceless.

 

As it was Charlie’s first full length feature film and one of greatest, in other words, Chaplin’s one of the finest per se (I can be sure of after watching the whole list of his features), one great word hit on my mind that Chaplin is the one of first auteur in cinema history before being fixed the definition of French auteur.



While I was browsing and searching something special writings on the making of The Kid [1921] and broadly on Charlie Chaplin's whole body of works, I found John Bengtson's site, an expert on Chaplin, and amazed the article on The Kid. I think it is great site to know about Charlie.


“The Kid” (1921)
Charlie Chaplin
English, USA.

Charlie Chaplin's First Feature Film : The Kid [1921]



 

 


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