KID, THE (1921) - DVD review

"The Kid," produced in 1921, was Charles Chaplin's first feature-length motion picture. Although he had been making short silent films for the previous half dozen years and he would appear in a few more short subjects thereafter, he had with "The Kid" firmly established himself as a major player in the movie business.

The picture also reaffirmed Chaplin's status as an auteur, a filmmaker whose total guidance of every element of production established his works' individuality. Once breaking away from Mack Sennett's Keystone Film Company in the mid teens, he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in virtually all of his movies, eventually building his own studio. So, as well as being a fine, funny, and moving film, "The Kid" may also find some appeal today for its purely historical value.

Probably as much or more of the movie's success must be attributed to Chaplin's costar, the kid of the title, five-year-old Jackie Coogan, who would grow up to be Uncle Fester on television's "Addams Family." After his rise to fame in "The Kid," Coogan became a sought-after child star for a few years, and then after falling into decline (and financial ruin), he made a slow but accomplished comeback as a character actor in his adult life. In Chaplin's film young Coogan is totally disarming, cute, and delightful. Chaplin is said to have hired him because of his ability to mimic anything the director told him to do.

In the story Chaplin naturally plays the Tramp, but this time his costar upstages him in every scene. A "woman whose sin was motherhood" abandons her baby with a note reading "Please love and care for this orphan child," and Charlie finds and unwillingly raises the kid for five years. Like it or not, the kid grows on him, and Charlie comes to love him as his own, as does the audience. The child at five years of age is played by young Coogan, who steals the picture.

Charlie teaches the kid to help them make a living as con artists, the child throwing rocks through people's windows and Charlie coming along to repair them. It's a shady enterprise and the only questionable issue in the narrative. Meanwhile, the mother rises to prominence as a stage entertainer, all the while regretting her giving up her child and looking constantly for him. By the end of the film, the welfare authorities catch up to Charlie and the kid and attempt to take the boy away to a county orphan asylum. But they have to fight the Tramp for him first.

As with most of Chaplin's work, just when you think things are going to turn maudlin and mushy, they don't. As Chaplin writes in the movie's forward, this is " A picture with a smile--and perhaps, a tear." True. And, mainly, we get the smiles. Even when Charlie and the kid are forcibly separated, a heartrending ordeal, the movie does not linger on the weepy details but pushes on. Nor are the gags as drawn out as they can be in many other Chaplin films; here, they are well paced and directly to the point, never overstepping their welcome.

There are some lovely, funny bits among the Tramp's and the kid's adventures, my favorites being those involving a policeman and his wife, a comic fight, and a scene in a flophouse. About the only thing that doesn't work very well is a concluding dream sequence. Chaplin, incidentally, looks not only younger and thinner in this film than we are used to seeing him later on, but his hair is fuller and his famous mustache thicker. Interestingly, too, I didn't for a moment miss the absence of dialogue, a sure sign the storytelling is on a high level.

Although the film was shot in 1921, the version we have here is the fiftieth-anniversary reissue, which Chaplin edited down from about sixty minutes to a little over fifty and to which he added an original musical score. The deleted scenes are included among the second disc's extras, and one can see why the director removed them because they don't add a lot to the narrative's focus. The new music is typically Chaplin, quite pleasant and jaunty when it needs to be and otherwise sentimental to a fault.

Video:
Restored by MK2 Editions of France from a pristine print found in the Chaplin family vault, the transfer shows hardly a sign of age. The image is clear, the black-and-white contrasts are mostly solid, and moiré effects are at a minimum. Perhaps the delineation could be sharper and some of the darker areas could be stronger, but overall the picture is excellently preserved.

Audio:
The set includes Chaplin's 1971 musical soundtrack in both its original monaural and in a new Dolby Digital 5.1 remix. Frankly, the mono is easier on the ears because the DD 5.1 in clarifying the sound also makes it brighter, harder, and edgier. But the 5.1 track does spread the sonics out better across the front speakers, even if it does little with the surrounds.

Extras:
I'd have to say this is the biggest, most-elaborate, two-disc, special-edition set ever devoted to a fifty-minute movie. If it seems a little extravagant, remember, it's an important film. Disc one contains the standard, 1.33:1 ratio screen presentation of the film; the two soundtracks previously mentioned; interscene cards in English, with Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Thai subtitles; and twenty scene selections.

Disc two, of course, contains the bonus items. Here you'll find a six-minute introduction by Chaplin's biographer, David Robinson, discussing the historical and cinematic context of the film. Then, there are the three main items, the twenty-six minute documentary "Chaplin Today: the Kid" by Alain Bergala with the participation of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami; the sixteen-minute film
"How to Make Movies" (1918), in which Chaplin shows the building of his new studio and how he made movies there; and the fifty-five minute feature film "My Boy" (1921), starring Jackie Coogan.

In addition, there are three scenes developing the role of the Kid's mother (Edna Purviance) that Chaplin deleted for the film's 1971 reissue; and footage of Chaplin conducting a section of his new score for the rerelease. Then, in a "Documents" segment, we find "Jackie Coogan Dances" (1920), the child star performing an impromptu dance for visitors at the Chaplin studios; "Nice and Friendly" (1922), a home movie with Lord and Lady Mountbatten, Jackie Coogan, and Charles Chaplin; "Charlie on the Ocean" (1921), newsreel footage of Chaplin's first trip back to Europe; and "Jackie Coogan in Paris," during a charity fund-raising trip. The extras conclude with a gallery of production stills and photos of Coogan; a gallery of film posters; several theatrical trailers for the film, including a German version and the 1971 reissue; and, finally, trailers for other movies in "The Chaplin Collection."

Parting Thoughts:
It's hard not to like "The Kid," with its old-fashioned yet endearing combination of pathos and humor. The film represents the quintessential Chaplin spirit, and it probably does more in its fifty-odd minutes to convince us of the man's genius than anything he ever did. It established Chaplin as a Hollywood filmmaker of the first order, a star that has not diminished in close to a century.

"The Kid" is available individually or as a part of a big boxed set, Volume Two of "The Chaplin Collection" from Warner Bros. and MK2. The seven-disc set includes "The Circus," "City Lights," "The Kid," "Monsieur Verdoux," "A Woman of Paris" and "A King in New York," "The Chaplin Revue" (seven of Chaplin's best comedy shorts), and "Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin," movie critic Richard Schickel's tribute to the comic filmmaker.