If Charlie Chaplin was not the stuntman, exhibitionist Buster Keaton was or the hard working everyman Harold Lloyd was, he surely made us cry the most.
“The Kid,” by far his most famous feature film firmly rooted in the silent era, is a lovely mix of sympathetic pathos and devilish slapstick.
Yet for as much as Chaplin made us feel, he was the kind of director and performer that could get a laugh from the idea of throwing a baby into a sewer.
This is the Tramp’s brief consideration near the beginning of 1921’s “The Kid,” in which he finds a baby who has been abandoned by his mother and disposed of near the trash by a pair of carjackers. Despite being helplessly poor, The Tramp takes in the baby after unsuccessfully trying to get rid of it with another mother and another bum.
That moment where he flips open the sewer grate and ponders the idea for even the slightest second is the same sort of laugh Chaplin would get years later with the thought of cannibalism in “The Gold Rush.” He had a wonderful knack for portraying this mischievous yet sympathetic character in the Tramp.
So when he still loves the kid, who he has spontaneously named “John” to cover his tracks, we don’t seem to mind that he’s raised John to break people’s windows so the Tramp can later go back and fix them for a price.
The little kid is played by the young Jackie Coogan, only 7 at the time and perhaps best known today (or by my Mom I would guess) as Uncle Fester on “The Addams Family.” He too is a tramp in the making, showing such chemistry with the biggest star in Hollywood.
It’s the pair that helps contribute to one of the movie’s funniest set pieces. Another little boy steals John’s toy, and John gets into a fight with him. Naturally, The Tramp is agitated and attempts to stop the fight, dangling John sideways by the back of his overalls as he scrambles to throw a few more punches.
But when John starts winning, his dad gets excited and encourages him for round two. It’s only then that the boy’s muscled older brother, who can punch through brick walls and bend lampposts in half, intervenes and says he’ll beat the Tramp if John beats his brother. Somehow, we’re not gasping when The Tramp steps on John’s chest and raises the arm of the crying boy in victory.
Chaplin counters all this mischief with tender moments from the boy’s mother. As played by Edna Purviance, she instantly feels regret at leaving her child behind, and when she discovers the car she placed her child in was stolen and lost for good, she’s crushed. She becomes a theater star as the boy ages and performs charity work, building to by far “The Kid’s” most elegant and tearful shot.
The boy sits on the porch behind his mother, she hands him a toy, cradles another woman’s baby, reflects again on the child she lost, and then slowly walks away, yet again with the boy still perched in the background.
Chaplin made “The Kid” at the height of his career. He made dozens of shorts staring the Tramp and became Hollywood’s first great star. It was not his first feature, nor his last, but it likewise came in the peak of the silent era in 1921. His next feature, one he’s known for much more today, would be “The Gold Rush” in 1925, and soon after, sound film would render his style of storytelling obsolete.
His stragglers with “City Lights” and “Modern Times” would make him legendary, but it’s exciting to see a classic comedy made at the time when everyone was still in love with his fiendish charms.