100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #122: The Kid (1921)

Written by, Directed by, and Starring Charlie Chaplin

“A picture with a smile- and perhaps a tear”

This is the opening title card of Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 masterpiece The Kid. This sentence represents the revolutionary nature of the film: its tragicomic style was a unique blend for the time that resonated with audiences nationwide and made both Chaplin and co-star Jackie Coogan bona fide stars.

The film follows Chaplin as his famous character “The Tramp” as he takes on the responsibility of raising an abandoned baby, who grows up to become the titular Kid (played wonderfully by Coogan). The film’s setting is reminiscent of Chaplin’s own childhood in poverty in Victorian-era London. As Chaplin recounts in his autobiography:

“I was hardly aware of a crisis because we lived in a continual crisis; and, being a boy, I dismissed our troubles with gracious forgetfulness”

So the film’s plot follows one such crisis after another, making for memorable gags involving a rock-throwing/window-replacement scheme and a boxing match which for me was the highlight of the film.

The film’s third star is Edna Purviance as “The Woman”, who is the mother of the Kid who abandons her child to avoid scandal, since she is unwed. She is introduced by the film’s second title card: “The woman- whose sin was motherhood”.

Interestingly, in the shot immediately following her walking out of the hospital with the newborn baby in her arms, we cut to a shot of Christ ascending Mount Calvary before the camera fades to black:

It is the only shot in the film that is pure montage- clearly representing the mother’s journey that she has gone through as a painful and Christlike one. She looks up, praying for forgiveness, before she leaves her baby in the back of an automobile in front of a mansion, and all throughout the film she is haunted by the guilt. She is also not helped by the indifference of “The Man”, the father (Carl Miller) who only appears in one scene where the Woman’s picture falls off the mantlepiece and into a fire as he begins to forget her.

Christianity is laced heavily throughout the film, especially in the actions of the Kid who must always remind his adopted father to pray either before meals or before bedtime, and in a climactic scene he prays directly to Heaven for rescue in time of need, leading to one of the film’s most iconic shots. (Check out Terry Lindvall’s documentary “Hollywood, Teach Us to Pray” for more on the history of prayer depicted on the big screen!). Also, the film’s “Dreamland” sequence towards the end has some fun with depicting the characters from the film as angels and devils.

Chaplin was an agnostic for most of his life, but he was raised by his mother to be an Anglican and at the end of his life actually asked for an Anglican funeral. Despite his falling away for most of his professional life, it’s clear- especially from this film- that the formation he received in his childhood stayed with him, especially when considering this quote from his autobiography:

“I remember an evening in our one room in the basement at Oakley Street. I lay in bed recovering from a fever. Sydney [Chaplin’s brother] had gone out to night school and Mother and I were alone. It was late afternoon, and she sat with her back to the window reading, acing and explaining in her inimitable way the New Testament and Christ's love and pity for the poor and for little children. Perhaps her emotion was due to my illness, but she gave the most luminous and appealing interpretation of Christ that I have ever heard or seen. She spoke of His tolerant understanding; of the woman who had sinned and who was to be stoned by the mob, and of His words to them: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’”

While some of Chaplin’s contemporaries like Orson Welles would deplore the actor’s habit of playing lowly underdogs such as The Tramp as a sign of Chaplin’s “false humility” (Welles often cited the numerous credit title cards he would give himself which is evident in this film), it’s still clear that the Bible lessons he received in his youth had a profound impact on him. The Kid can trace its roots to the stories of Christ caring for the poor and his special love of children, as well as the story of Christ’s defense of the adulteress.

There is also one more, tragic autobiographical aspect to the film: in 1919 his wife gave birth to a son, Norman Spencer Chaplin, who was born malformed and died three days later. Only ten days after his son’s death, Charlie Chaplin began auditioning boys to play the role of “The Kid”, and filming on the project began the next month.

All of these elements help to elevate The Kid into more than just another silent comedy and are part of what made Chaplin one of the greatest directors of all time. I confess that upon finishing the film I didn’t exactly think there was much I could write on aside from the fact that the film was delightful, but after doing research I am now convinced Chaplin may be one of our most undersung Christian auteurs.

The Kid is available to watch on the Criterion Channel: I definitely recommend watching the version available there (or purchasing the Criterion Blu-Ray) as the restoration work on it is fantastic. It also includes the musical score which Chaplin himself composed, re-scoring the film an entire half a century later.