There are two facts behind this movie that is worth mentioning. First of all, Chaplin had reached a point where he had as good as complete control of his movies and he wanted to go beyond the shorts he had been making until then. It took around a year to complete so it is clear that it was a statement he was aiming for. Secondly, in his private life he had just lost an infant son and he is in grief. "The Kid" is a very personal film i believe and i am sure many scenes are inspired by experiences in his own childhood and a fantasy about the caring father he never had. Fatherly love and wisdom is the gateway to life for a boy.
A mother is abandoned by the father of a child. She then abandons the child by dumping it in a rich mans car, but the car is stolen and the thieves dump the kid in the gutter in the slums. The tramp finds him and tries to figure out who has left it behind. But no one seems to be missing a child, so he decides to keep him for himself. The story develops around the tramps growing fatherly feelings for the boy, how the state tries to take him away and who the rightful "owner" of a child really is.
It is clear to me that he struggled with making this a "full length" movie. The fighting scene with the bad boy and his violent father and the angelic scenes feels too much like fillers to stretch the playing time. That said there are some really funny scenes here that are short and elegant in the fashion you expect from Chaplin. I particularly like the scene where he flirts with the woman, who´s window the kid and him have conspired to break and remake (a reference to the broken window fallacy?). He is not aware that the hand on his shoulder is her husbands and not hers. The kid is played by Jackie Coogan, and he is a natural talent. No wonder Chaplin choose him as the only actor ever to share the lead with him. But the scene that steels the whole movie is the chase after the orphanage officials truck over the roof tops and the reunion of father and child. The fantasy that one man can fight the state alone is very anarchic and it hits me deep. I have never watched this scene without getting a lump in my throat and blurry eyes. And much to my amazement, when i got the high-def blu-ray edition of the movie, i realized that Charlie himself has a tear in his eye, when he kisses and hugs the kid on the van. A truly remarkable scene for the time.
A point that is important to mention, is Chaplins relation to women, and mothers in particular. He is unable to give the mother here any responsibility for her actions. She actually abandons the child, when she is the only parent left. But then he reintroduces her into the story and makes her change her mind, when she has become rich and famous, and behave emphatically by showing her as charitable to poor kids. I suppose that that is another of Chaplins old fantasies about his mother. He wished she would become rich and famous and then have time and mental capacity to notice him. I am sure that Chaplins hesitation to give women responsibility, is based in his own mother´s denial of responsibility for chosing to give him a shitty father. Chaplin tries to fill out that father gap, while stepstoning over his mothers responsibilty.
This is Chaplins first venture into feature films and it sure is a great classic. He still has to find the perfect blend between, plot, story and gags and that is pretty much his job in the years to come. He IS the tramp. He cannot go anywhere else so this figure has to be molded into deeper and more interesting stories, while still staying the same. That is an incredible balancing act that he faces but he knows it is what he has to do.
rating: 9/10