The Kid

I watched Charlie Chaplin in The Kid (1921). I always forget that these old comedies are not just a set of slapstick setpieces, but have working plots, too, and in this case, a lot of pathos. It’s not as funny as The Gold Rush, but that little kid (who’d grow up to be Uncle Fester) gives a performance just as funny as Chaplin’s, and the scene with the community workers coming to take him away is as potent now as it can have been almost 90 years ago. The silent film is an art-form of its own, and its simplicity and whimsy quite different from Hollywood today, but humour and emotions can always prevail.

Interesting seeing the scene with Chaplin and Lita Grey in the bizarre dream sequence at the end of the film. She’s cast as an angel who learns to flirt, coquettishly eying up Chaplin before exchanging some kisses with him and her other boyfriend. Three years later, Chaplin would marry her and get her pregnant, at sixteen. So here, she was thirteen. Can’t get away with that these days. No wonder rumour has it that Lillita Grey was amongst the inspirations for Dolores Haze, Lolita.