Teaching Film 05: The Kid

Studying the 1921 Chaplin film in grade 11 intro to film

After a look at A Trip to the Moon, I jump forward to 1921, and Charlie Chaplin’s hour-long feature The Kid. This film always works, always surprises, and plenty of kids name it among their favourites at the course’s end. Early film is a bit of a hard sell to kids living 100 years later, but I have consistently found Chaplin and The Kid to be the way to pull them in.

I encourage chatting during this film, though I often leave some of the soundtrack on quietly — Chaplin composed and added it in the 1970s, I think, and it adds to the melodrama. But leaving room for the students to discuss and analyze the action out loud, collaboratively, helps them engage with the film.

The Kid is an hour long, boasts amazing performances, and gives a good glimpse of another era. It shows the shoestring creativity of early Hollywood — pillow muscles, corny flying effects — but also grabs and holds the heartstrings very effectively, on the strength of the two main actors. It is funny, affectingly melodramatic, and action-packed.

History Onscreen

Film allows us to see into another era: what the clothes, roads, vehicles, and buildings were like. It’s a great opportunity to dig into the visible history of 1921 America: the social setup of the Gilded Age (mansions, cars, and luxury in some scenes, and slums, metered heating, and marginal living in others); and the unabashed cruelty practiced against unwed mothers, impoverished families, and children — all in the name of “decency,” meaning something quite different than how we might use that word today.

The child comes to be with Chaplin due to his mother’s impossible situation of being unwed with a child. The patriarchal setup of her being abandoned at pregnancy is made clear, and her heartbreak is palpable.

In the film’s most powerful scene, a doctor is called to attend to the titular Kid, who has a fever. But when the upper-class doctor shows up, he refuses to speak with Chaplin, is openly disgusted by their family hovel, and his solution is to take the child away, forcibly and on the spot, to an orphanage. Chaplin’s rescue of his adopted son is a fantastic, action-packed scene.

Drawing Connections

If the doctor’s behaviour seems unbelievable, draw a connection to historical kidnapping of Indigenous children and removal to the residential “schools” and/or the current, ongoing removal of the same kids to the foster “care” system — all framed as being for the children’s “own good.”

The discussions of the mindset and values that result can be powerful; at the very least they build sympathy for the victims of such brutality and stoke resolve to end these practices. (That discussion tends to happen after the film.)

Hollywood and Movie Stars

The release of The Kid coincided with the rise of the Hollywood as an industry and its star system. Hollywood exists where it does for a few interesting reasons:

1. The geographical location gives easy access to many filming possibilities: at the ocean, the mountains, deserts, and forests.
2. The land was inexpensive — the industry arrives with the final push across the continent. (Newly stolen land is affordable land.)
3. The location was as far as possible from Thomas Edison and the patents he held for the filming and projecting technologies.

That last point is fascinating, as it is Hollywood who has for decades championed and abused copyright (you may recall the red FBI warnings that started every movie you ever watched at home). Copyright and fair-use will be discussed in a later post here — it is pretty interesting.

Movie stars were invented when Hollywood realized people were favouring certain onscreen performers. They capitalized on that interest by fore-fronting their famous actors in advertisements and publications of all kinds — a trend that will lead directly to our current celebrity culture.

(Note: I really dislike celebrity culture, but I treat that as my own thing. I don’t slag the star system openly, same way I don’t slag superhero movies or whatever — because it is disrespectful to the kids. Lots of people love movie stars and superhero flicks — and I’m trying to turn the class on to movies, not teach them to be me. I don’t keep it a secret, but I don’t bring it up.)

The Story

The story begins with an unwed mother considering how totally screwed she is, even as she gazes at her lovely baby. She decides to leave the child in the car out front of a mansion with a note asking them to raise him. BUT! Some robber-fellows in strange makeup steal that car, and the baby with it. When they discover the wailing child, they leave him in alley.

Along comes The Tramp, the famous and beloved Chaplin character you likely already know. As usual, he’s affecting upper-class manners while smoking old stogies he’s found. He finds the baby, and being a nice guy, picks it up and places it back where he believes it must have fallen from — a nearby pram. The owner of the pram gives him hell, and after a few more attempts to place the child somewhere, he takes it into his own hovel and raises it.

Cut to five years later, this child, played by Jackie Coogan (much later, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family TV show) and our hero have become a tight little family. The affection between them is delightful. They work together on the family scam, with the boy breaking windows so that the man can sell replacements. Hijinks ensue.

The child’s mother, now a successful actress, pines for her child, and performs charitable acts as she tries to find him. After all kinds of drama, they are reunited, and The Tramp is included, and that is the happy ending.

Uh-Oh, Another Creepy Man

…And I don’t mean grown-up Jackie Coogan.

I was disappointed to learn while researching this piece that Chaplin numbers among the “beloved” men of the past who appears to be more of a “piece of shit” today, 100 years later. I find that kids are pretty tuned into this sort of news, and if you haven’t got a way of discussing that ready, you should probably prepare one. Chaplin was apparently a shitty husband to a series of very young wives. (He was also an orphan whose father abandoned his mother, who was then institutionalized — where does poor behaviour start?)

So the question will arise: what do we do with the art of compromised people? I’ve had this discussion most often over the film Baby Driver — the amazing film that stars one confirmed and one accused predatory man.

I tend to deal with it by (a) letting the conversation go where it needs to (trying to get ahead or on top of it is not my style — too coercive — so I let them talk it out, and I provide the frame wherein we hear each other out), and (b) provide my own reasoning as a model, without pretending there’s a clear answer, or one that will satisfy all.

I try to separate art from artists as much as I can (because I want the art), especially with ultra-collaborative art forms like film. I also find it easy to separate actors from the art they’re involved in (Kevin Spacey’s supposed craft is about not being Kevin Spacey, for example). In contrast, Louie CK’s art was about honestly being Louis CK.

In addition, I make it clear that it’s a live question, and that there are plenty of cases where I do not know how to behave, or am still deciding, and am open to input. I think it’s important to model comfort with uncertainty, and to resist pretending to be certain when we’re not.

Also, I always provide an out for kids who can’t handle a certain work for some reason. They rarely take me up on the offer to work elsewhere and study something else, and the kids who do, do this over Jaws, because it’s frightening. My impression is that students want to just talk it through and be heard. Which is what I’d want, too.

Anyway, until this moment I had happily known nothing about Charlie Chaplin the person. I know The Kid, and I love it on its own merits, and the Tramp on his own, too. But knowing is part of the burden of life. I hope this doesn’t spoil The Kid for you. If it does, well, we’re all getting pretty used to that situation. (This short aside might lend credence to my practice of not concerning myself with the lives of celebrities.)

Extra Stuff

A short essay on Chaplin’s invention of the “dramedy” with The Kid.

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peace out

jep