The Kid (1921)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Kid also The Vagabond and the Child or just The Child |
| Original title | The kid |
 | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1921 |
| length | Original version: 67 New version (1971): 53 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 0 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Charlie Chaplin |
| script | Charlie Chaplin |
| production | Charlie Chaplin |
| music | Charlie Chaplin |
| camera | Roland Totheroh |
| cut | Charlie Chaplin |
| occupation | |
| |
The Kid , also known in Germany as Der Vagabund und das Kind , is an American silent film - tragic comedy directed by Charlie Chaplin from 1921 . The main roles are played by Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance and Jackie Coogan , who became a child star through this film . Charles Chaplin's first feature-length film as a director is about a tramp who finds and raises a small child. However, external circumstances endanger the intimate relationship between the two. The film combines comedy with social drama, which was almost unique at the time. The Kid was a huge box office success of its time and is still one of Chaplin's most famous works today. In 2011 the film was included in the National Film Registry .
action
When she leaves the hospital after giving birth, a mother abandoned by the father of her child puts her newborn in a limousine. On a piece of paper she leaves the request to take care of “the orphan ”. Then she wants to take her own life. Shortly afterwards, thieves steal the limousine. When they notice the baby in the back seat, they simply throw it away next to a garbage can. The tramp , who is poor but not homeless, finds the child. After trying in vain to get rid of it, he takes it home with him. He finds his mother's note and from then on looks after the little one like a father, whom he names John. In the meantime, her mother - plagued by remorse - has given up her suicide plan, but cannot find the limousine parked in front of the villa and learns that it has been stolen.
Five years later, the mother has become an opera star. She does charity work, during which, without knowing it, she also meets her son, who has grown into a lively toddler. At a reception she meets the child's father, who has also become famous, but the wounds of the past cannot be healed - she still suffers from the loss of her child.
During one of her visits to the poor district, she finds the boy sick and brings him to Charlie. She promises to come back to see the boy. When asked by the doctor treating John, Charlie explains that he is not the real father and shows him the note written by his mother. The doctor announces that he will see to it that the child receives adequate care. Some time later, two employees from the local orphanage appear to pick John up. The violent resistance of Charlie and the boy can only be broken with the help of a police officer who has been summoned, but Charlie escapes the police officer and can bring John back to himself before he arrives at the orphanage.
Meanwhile, the mother, who as promised wants to check on the boy, meets the doctor in front of the empty apartment, who has also come in vain. He shows her the note and the mother realizes that John is her own child.
Since Charlie cannot go back to his apartment, he sleeps with John in a cheap poor shelter. Their host discovers an advertisement for the child in the newspaper and takes John asleep to the police in order to earn the reward. Charlie looks in vain for John. While the mother picks up her child from the police at dawn, Charlie returns to his apartment dejected. He finds it locked and falls asleep in front of the house entrance. From a dream he is rudely awakened by a police officer who takes him to his mother's house, where he can hug John again.
backgrounds
Filming
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The Kid was the first full-length film to direct Chaplin, who until then had only made the short comedies that were common at the time . For the film, Chaplin borrowed $ 500,000 from an Italian bank. The film budget was $ 250,000. Filming took five and a half months, and post-production of the film also took a long time. The film was shot at Charlie Chaplin's studios in Hollywood and on Olvera Street in Los Angeles . Chaplin's deputy director was Charles Reisner , who played the stupid street thug in the film. At the end of the shooting, Chaplin had 53 times as much footage in the box as was used in the actual film. Chaplin had never invested so much time and money in any of his films.
As a film producer, Charlie Chaplin was the first to combine comedy and social drama . In the opening credits there is the sentence: “A film with a smile and - maybe - a tear.” Something like this was unusual and almost unique for the comedies of the silent film era: Most of them did not deal with any serious topics, and the comedies also took their characters in other ways hardly serious, just ridiculed her. In his later films, this combination of comedy, pathos and human warmth was considered a trademark of Chaplin.
Charlie Chaplin saw Jackie Coogan with his father Jack Coogan Sr. (1887-1935) at a vaudeville performance. Convinced of Coogan's talent, he attributed the child's story to him. Chaplin and Coogan got along well and regularly visited amusement parks and similar places together on Sundays. They remained friends until Chaplin's death in 1977. Coogan's father was hired by Chaplin to coach his son, earning $ 125 a week, while his starring son got just $ 75. Coogan Sr. also took on several minor supporting roles in the film, including as the accommodation pickpocket. In his autobiography, Chaplin recalled that Coogan Sr. was supposed to make his son cry while filming the scene in which the child is nearly taken to the orphanage. Coogan Sr. then told his son that if he didn't cry on the scene, he would also be taken to the orphanage. Ultimately, the boy cried.
"The Kid" in relation to Chaplin's life
Many film historians see the film in reference to Chaplin's own childhood in the slums of London with a mentally ill mother; likewise with regard to the death of his newborn son three days after his birth in July 1919.
The underage actress Lita Gray , who tried to seduce the tramp in his dream sequence, married Charles Chaplin about three years later because, as a result of an affair during the filming of Gold Rush, she was expecting a child at the age of 16: Charles Chaplin junior . At the time The Kid was shot, Chaplin was still in a war of divorce with his first wife, Mildred Harris . Mildred's lawyers threatened to confiscate the negative of the film. Then Chaplin secretly fled with the negatives and his closest associates from California to Salt Lake City , where he cut them together in a hotel room.
Publication, aftermath and revision
The film premiered on January 21, 1921 in New York City. The film only premiered in Germany on November 9, 1923, and there was a re-release of The Kid in Germany in 1997. Ultimately, the risk should be worth it for Chaplin, because The Kid became a box-office hit and made 2.5 million US dollars -Dollar profit, which was an exceptionally large sum at the time. Overall, the film is said to have brought in around 60 million US dollars to date.
Jackie Coogan became America's biggest child star of the 1920s through the film, but success left him after puberty and his mother and stepfather had spent all his money. He later had some success as a character actor, such as Uncle Fester in the series The Addams Family . The only actor from the film who is still alive today (as of November 2019) is Silas Hathaway (* 1919), who played the child as a baby in the film.
In 1971, half a century after the film was released, Chaplin, over 80 years old, composed a score for The Kid . The music was arranged by the British composer Eric Rogers . In addition, Chaplin cut out some scenes with the father and mother from the original 67-minute long film, which he found too sentimental. Among other things, the scenes in which the sad mother observes a not so happy wedding, a longer shot that shows the father as a painter painting pictures, a scene in which a strange child runs towards the mother and she opens it are cut out takes her arm and it is immediately taken from her by a nanny, as well as the scene in which the father and mother of the child meet again at a party and the father announces his suffering, reminiscing about the past, but according to the mother it is for it is already too late.
Reviews
All 19 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes to The Kid are positive. The film has 8.3 stars on the Internet Movie Database and is 99th among the best films. (As of April 2019)
“In his first full-length feature film, Chaplin reflects on his own childhood. A sentimental, bitter, socially critical tragicomedy, in which realism , romance and phantasmagoria, thanks to Chaplin and little Jackie Coogan's irresistible portrayal with gags and slapsticks , combine to create a great cinematic enjoyment. "
“As in most of his other productions, the film music was composed especially for 'The Vagabond and the Child' and manages to convey the mood on the screen into the ears of the audience in a remarkable way at all times. But the tragicomedy is not entirely without weaknesses. Especially in the final dream scene , Chaplin exaggerated a little with the black and white painting. After evil, in the person of devils , gains access to the paradisiacal world, there is utter chaos. The tramp on the ground - the child snatched away. But certainly negligible in the context of the excellent overall impression. With 'The Vagabond and the Child', Charlie Chaplin succeeded in creating a fascinating work with a lot of laughter and perhaps a tear. "
“As in many of his films, Chaplin's 'The Kid' is somewhat of a social criticism. A man is stolen from a child just because he is poor. That is the only reason why one does not trust him to raise a child, whereas one would give the little one to a rich woman without hesitation. [...] 'The Kid' is a wonderful film that is wonderfully entertaining for almost the entire 55 minutes and, as the opening credits promised, only caused a tear. "
Awards
In 2011 the film was included in the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". The reason stated: “Charles Chaplin's first feature-length film, the silent film classic The Kid , is an artful amalgamation into a touching drama, with a social connection and inventive comedy. [...] The Kid is a high point in Chaplin's developmental work and proves that he can maintain his artistry even over the length of his usual short film comedies and can trigger strong, diverse emotions in his viewers through the skillful combination of slapstick and pathos ... "
literature
- Dietrich Leder: Das Kind / Der Vagabund und das Kind / The Kid . In: Thomas Koebner (Ed.): Classic films - descriptions and comments . 5th edition. tape 1: 1913-1945 . Reclam junior, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-15-030033-6 , p. 58-61 .
Web links
- The Kid in theInternet Movie Database(English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Release for The Kid . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , February 2010 (PDF; test number: 14 905 V).
- ↑ hagiblog.wordpress.com ( Memento from November 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Article on "The Kid" at Charliechaplin.com
- ↑ Ruhrnachrichten: Interview with Chaplin expert Lisa Stein Haven on his 125th birthday (2014) ( Memento of the original from April 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ The Kid at Turner Classic Movies
- ^ The Kid at Turner Classic Movies
- ↑ Release dates of "The Kid" on the Internet Movie Database
- ^ The Kid at Turner Classic Movies
- ^ Letter from Silas Hathaway from December 2013
- ↑ Service in 'Hell on Wheels' led to amputated fingers. In: The Desert Sun. April 21, 2012, archived from the original on July 24, 2015 ; Retrieved on March 14, 2016 (interview with Hathaway from 2012 - but on a different topic).
- ↑ Chaplin's 1971 film music on YouTube
- ↑ The Kid on Allmovie
- ^ "The Kid" at www.Ednapurviance.org
- ^ The Kid (1921). Retrieved May 26, 2014 .
- ↑ The Kid. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ The vagabond and the child. In: FILMSTARTS. Retrieved March 14, 2016 .
- ^ The kid (USA 1921, Charlie Chaplin). In: twoday.net. Retrieved March 14, 2016 .
- ^ Establishment of the National Film Registry
