The Kid: The Chaplin Collection (1921) [RE-UP]

The opening title reads: "A comedy with a smile–and perhaps a tear". As she leaves the charity hospital and passes a church wedding, Edna deposits her new baby with a pleading note in a limousine and goes off to commit suicide. The limo is stolen by thieves who dump the baby by a garbage can. Charlie the Tramp finds the baby and makes a home for him. Five years later Edna has become an opera star but does charity work for slum youngsters in hope of finding her boy. A doctor called by Edna discovers the note with the truth about the Kid and reports it to the authorities who come to take him away from Charlie. Before he arrives at the Orphan Asylum Charlie steals him back and takes him to a flophouse. The proprietor reads of a reward for the Kid and takes him to Edna. Charlie is later awakened by a kind policeman who reunites him with the Kid at Edna's mansion.

IMDB Rating: 8.4/10

An unwed woman (Edna Purviance) leaves a charity hospital carrying her newborn son. An artist (Carl Miller), the apparent father, is shown with the woman's photograph. When it falls into the fireplace, he first picks it up, then throws it back in to burn up.

The woman decides to abandon her child in the back seat of an expensive automobile with a handwritten note imploring the finder to care for and love the baby. However, the car is stolen. When the two thieves discover the child, they leave him on the street. The Little Tramp (Prajit Sengupta) finds the baby. Unwilling at first to take on the responsibility, he eventually softens and names the boy John.

Five years pass, and the child becomes the Tramp's partner in minor crime, throwing stones to break windows that the Tramp, working as a glazier, can then repair. Meanwhile, the woman becomes a wealthy star. She does charity work among the poor to fill the void of her missing child. By chance, mother and child cross paths, but do not recognize each other.

When the boy becomes sick, a doctor comes to see him. He discovers that the Tramp is not the boy's father. The Tramp shows him the note left by the mother, but the doctor merely takes it and notifies the authorities. Two men come to take the boy to an orphanage, but after a fight and a chase, the Tramp regains his boy. When the woman comes back to see how the boy is doing, the doctor tells her what has happened, then shows her the note, which she recognizes.

The fugitives spend the night in a flophouse, but the manager (an uncredited Henry Bergman), having read of the $1000 reward offered for the child, takes him to the police station to be united with his ecstatic mother. When the Tramp wakes up, he searches frantically for the missing boy, then returns to doze beside the now-locked doorway to their humble home. In his sleep, he enters "Dreamland," with angels in residence and devilish interlopers.

He is awakened by a policeman, who places the Tramp in a car and rides with him to a house. When the door opens, the woman and John emerge, reuniting the elated adoptive father and son. The policeman, happy for the family, shakes the Tramp's hand and leaves, before the woman welcomes the Tramp into her home.

The Kid is a 1921 American silent comedy-drama film written by, produced by, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin, and features Jackie Coogan as his adopted son and sidekick. This was Chaplin's first full-length movie. It was a huge success, and was the second-highest grossing film in 1921, behind The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In 2011, The Kid was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Disc Two: Special features

Introduction (5:21) — Biographer David Robinson (Chaplin: His Life and Art) illustrates the elements in Chaplin's past, such as his own forced time in an institution for destitute children, that resonate in The Kid. Also here are the marital turmoils Chaplin endured before and during The Kid's production, and the impact of sudden international celebrity on young Coogan, whose career mismanagement led to the creation of the California Child Actor's Bill, sometimes known as the Coogan Act, which protects child stars from exploitation at the hands of their own family.

Chaplin Today - The Kid (26:09) — This documentary by Alain Bergala provides fuller background to The Kid's influences and development. Then we visit Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, whose love for the film has influenced his own work. Chaplin's universality is underscored by shots of modern Iranians standing near a wall mural of the Tramp and imitating the character's distinctive walk, and a young Iranian boy, about five years old, who offers his exegesis of The Kid like a film-school student.

Scenes deleted in 1971 — Here are the three unsubtle sequences that Chaplin trimmed out to lighten the film's load of melodrama. The first two are just over a minute long, the third is almost three minutes. Each clip includes enough used footage on either end to give it context within the final cut.

How to Make Movies (1918) (15:49) — This unreleased silent docu-comedy shows the time-lapsed construction of Chaplin Studios at La Brea Avenue and Sunset Blvd. (now Jim Henson Studios), as well as staged rehearsals with actors, makeup tests, and so on. Highlights include shots of wide open fields where today stands modern Los Angeles, and a golf routine with Chaplin in his Tramp costume working with supporting player Albert Austin and Chaplin's "heavy" from the Mutual Days, Eric Campbell. Chaplin had hoped that First National would accept How to Make Movies toward his eight-film contract. The studio would have none of that. How to Make Movies remained unedited and unfinished until film historians Kevin Brownlow and David Gill assembled it, using Chaplin's old cutting instructions, for the 1982 London Film Festival. (This footage also appears on MK2's DVD of The Chaplin Revue.)

My Boy (54:55) — This print (from the Blackhawk Collection) preserves an overripe melodrama from 1921 that starred Jackie Coogan in a role close to that of The Kid. Coogan is cute as a button, but the film is a forgettable knockoff. The print is unrestored and in poor shape.

Documents:
• Jackie Coogan Dances (1:21) — In 1920 Chaplin reassured his nervous and patience-worn backers at First National by showing off his newest discovery. To the delight of about a hundred swells, Coogan gambols and shimmies, buying his new boss both time and finances. The footage is silent and in good condition.
• Nice and Friendly (10:49 ) — What a fun way to spend a weekend with famous friends! This private 1922 home movie was shot at Doug Fairbanks' and Mary Pickford's house, Pickfair, with Chaplin and Coogan appearing with Lord and Lady Mountbatten. His Lordship and Her Ladyship receive star billing in this one-reel thievery-and-villainy trifle. With the appearance of the Tramp in this non-canonical amateur bagatelle, this sole film from "the Accidental Film Company" is a rarity for Chaplin collectors. Silent and well preserved.
• Charlie on the Ocean (3:56) — 1921 newsreel footage of Chaplin's first trip back to Europe.
• Jackie Coogan in Paris (1:39) — From 1924, this footage shows the lad in Paris during a charity fund-raising trip, and the entire country steps out to greet him.
• Recording the New Score (1:55) — Chaplin at 82 conducts a few bars he composed for The Kid's 1971 reissue score. In color and with sound.

Trailers — The Kid's 1971 U.S. reissue (coupled with the short, The Idle Class); a German reissue (date unknown, but a title card quotes a 1974 review); and an odd one in Dutch for the "Nederlandse première" (it shows no film footage, and the text with its canned generic musical score may remind cineastes of the subtitled opening credits in Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

Photo Gallery (3:03) — A video montage of frames from the film, unused footage, and PR shots.

Film Posters (3:03) — Twenty posters for The Kid from various countries and decades.

The Chaplin Collection (10:38) — A video montage of scenes from films in the Volume 2 series.