Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Kid (1921)

The Kid (1921) is among Charles Chaplin’s best-known films, and the one that made a star of little Jackie Coogan. Coogan, Chaplin and Edna Purviance all give sterling performances this film which is one of Chaplin’s finest productions.

When a single mother despairs over her inability to care for her infant child, both abandoned by its poor artist father, she chooses to leave him in the expensive automobile of a wealthy family, gambling that her child will have a better life. When the automobile is stolen by a pair of thugs, the baby is abandoned in a slum alleyway. The child is discovered by Charlie, who tries to pass along the responsibility for its safety to others only to have the baby delivered back to his possession like a bad penny. Resigned to the responsibility, Charlie takes the child to his rundown lodgings.

Five years later, life in the grubby flat has settled down to a routine — the kid and Charlie is equal part responsible for the other. Elsewhere, the mother has had good fortune befall her, now being a successful star of an undisclosed discipline. She now despairs over her hasty and shortsighted decision to abandon her child, and yearns to be reunited with him.

Meanwhile, circumstances lead to the interference of a social reformation group (a popular theme of the silent era) and the attempted placement of the kid in an orphans home. On the lam from the authorities, the kid and Charlie are eventually separated, while the mother discovers the identity of her lost child that she coincidentally encountered in the slum.

The film itself was almost a pawn in the 1918 divorce of Chaplin from his first wife, actress Mildred Harris. Chaplin slipped the unedited film out of Hollywood to Salt Lake City, where he attempted to edit the film in a hotel room there before moving on to a secretive location in New York City.

Given that the film was more than a year in production, with Chaplin improvising his story during shooting, it is interesting on multiple viewings to look for a production chronology in the apparent age of Jackie Coogan in sequences that made it into the final film. For instance, some of the earliest footage of Coogan in the film is seen during the street fight sequence with the bully kid and his bully brother.

Look for Jack Coogan, Jackie’s father, as the flophouse pickpocket.

The Kid strikes an impressive balance between comedy and pathos. Who is not effected by the separation scene, with Coogan wrenching the audience’s heart with his performance? Only the callous. The Kid is necessary for any serious silent film collection.

— Carl Bennett

This Criterion Blu-ray Disc edition features a new 4K digital restoration of the 1972 rerelease version of the film scanned from first-generation 35mm film elements held by Cineteca di Bologna and the Roy Export company. The visual quality is excellent and, at times, stunning. Some footage only rates a 9 on our scale but much of the footage rates a 10 (wow!).

The supplementary material includes a new audio commentary featuring historian Charles Maland; Jackie Coogan: The First Child Star, a new video essay by historian Lisa Haven (19 minutes); A Study in Undercranking, a new program featuring silent-film accompaniest and historian Ben Model (25 minutes); video interviews with Coogan (11 minutes) and actor Lita Grey Chaplin (10 minutes); excerpts from audio interviews with cinematographer Roland Totheroh (8 minutes) and film distributor Mo Rothman (10 minutes); deleted scenes and titles from the original 1921 version of The Kid (7 minutes); “Charlie” on the Ocean, a 1921 newsreel documenting Chaplin’s first return trip to Europe (4 minutes); archival footage of Chaplin conducting his score for The Kid (2 minutes); Nice and Friendly (1922), a silent short featuring Chaplin and Coogan and presented with a new score by composer Timothy Brock (11 minutes); film trailers (3 minutes); and a booklet essay by film scholar Tom Gunning.

The film is presented with the sound version music score composed by Charles Chaplin in uncompressed mono sound.

To be certain, this Blu-ray Disc is our recommended home video edition of The Kid.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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The supplementary material includes a new audio commentary featuring historian Charles Maland; Jackie Coogan: The First Child Star, a new video essay by historian Lisa Haven (19 minutes); A Study in Undercranking, a new program featuring silent-film accompaniest and historian Ben Model (25 minutes); video interviews with Coogan (11 minutes) and actor Lita Grey Chaplin (10 minutes); excerpts from audio interviews with cinematographer Roland Totheroh (8 minutes) and film distributor Mo Rothman (10 minutes); deleted scenes and titles from the original 1921 version of The Kid (7 minutes); “Charlie” on the Ocean, a 1921 newsreel documenting Chaplin’s first return trip to Europe (4 minutes); archival footage of Chaplin conducting his score for The Kid (2 minutes); Nice and Friendly (1922), a silent short featuring Chaplin and Coogan and presented with a new score by composer Timothy Brock (11 minutes); film trailers (3 minutes); and a booklet essay by film scholar Tom Gunning.

The film is presented with the sound version music score composed by Charles Chaplin.

For those who still prefer DVD, even sight unseen, this is our recommended DVD edition of The Kid.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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The disc’s supplemental material includes an introduction by David Robinson (6 minutes), Chaplin Today: The Kid Documentary (26 minutes), scenes deleted from the 1971 rerelease of The Kid (6 minutes), footage of Chaplin rehearsing the recording of the 1971 music score (2 minutes), Jackie Coogan Dances (1920) (2 minutes), the behind-the-scenes film at the Chaplin studio Nice and Friendly (1922) (11 minutes), a photo gallery, and Chaplin film trailers.

North American collectors will need a Region B or region-free Blu-ray Disc player to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region B Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

This PAL DVD edition of The Kid, from a Scottish distribution company and produced for home video by MK2 Diffusion, features a new high-definition video transfer from 35mm print materials controlled by the Estate of Charles Chaplin. The slightly faster-than-natural-speed full-frame HD transfer has been digitally cleaned of dust and speckling with almost no remaining examples of such. No image stabilization has been performed so there is some minor picture movement within the frame, which is not noticeable to the average viewer. As would be expected from an HD transfer utilizing high-quality print materials the resulting picture is excellent, with a broad range of greytones and sharp picture details.

The film is presented with the established music score composed by Charles Chaplin.

The disc’s supplemental material includes an introduction by David Robinson (6 minutes), Chaplin Today: The Kid Documentary (26 minutes), scenes deleted from the 1971 rerelease of The Kid (6 minutes), footage of Chaplin rehearsing the recording of the 1971 music score (2 minutes), Jackie Coogan Dances (1920) (2 minutes), the behind-the-scenes film at the Chaplin studio Nice and Friendly (1922) (11 minutes), a photo gallery, and Chaplin film trailers.

This being nearly identical in content to the 2004 Warner Home Video edition noted below, with the exception being the excision of Jackie Coogan in My Boy (1921) and the full version of How to Make Movies (1918) among a few other things, owners of that edition might be hard pressed to justify upgrading to this Park Circus edition. This edition, currently the only high-quality edition in print, is recommended for those who want to add the film to their collection now. With a high-definition option noted above, we recommend this edition only for those with standard-definition televisions.

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 2 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Purchase supports Silent Era.

This DVD edition of The Kid, sanctioned by the Estate of Charles Chaplin and produced for home video by MK2 éditions, has been digitally restored from the original Chaplin negative. However, we have had problems with the disc displaying properly to a 16:9 high-definition television when played from one of our DVD players. The picture fills the 16:9 monitor in width (already wrong for a 4:3 format picture) and crops the top and bottom of the picture to do so. No amount of manipulation of the picture settings ideally resolves the issue.

The picture itself is excellent, with the source materials being about as good as they can get for 90-year-old film. The transfer holds a broad range of greytones, from intact highlights to deep shadows — some a little darker than the 2000 CBS/Fox edition noted below. However, the short running time is a concern when compared to the earlier edition. This is the result of utilizing the shorter 1971 rerelease version of the film coupled with a faster-than-natural-pace video transfer rate.

The film is presented with the established music score composed by Charles Chaplin.

Overall, a wonderful viewing experience on a standard television. Still pretty darn good on an HD television, too. This edition is now out-of-print.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

This DVD edition of Chaplin’s second feature film, his first self-produced and self-directed feature, also presents the Chaplin short film A Dog’s Life (1918). It appears that the masters from the 1993 Chaplin: A Legacy of Laughter laserdisc series have been utilized for this and other year 2000 Chaplin DVD releases; meaning that the video masters for this edition are analog and date to 1993. Given the longer running time than the MK2-produced editions noted above, this edition includes footage that Chaplin excised for the film’s 1971 rerelease.

The edition still looks good, even on a high-definition monitor, despite some flat, greyish highlights, the slightly softer picture, and the usual dust and speckling. The close-to-natural-speed video transfer shows all of the surviving picture image, as is evidenced by the frame edges seen in certain scenes.

The film is presented with the established music score composed by Charles Chaplin, although the music is abruptly edited and repeated in places to cover the extra footage in this edition that was not present in the 1971 rerelease version, for which this score was recorded.

The disc’s supplemental material includes a still gallery of Chaplin’s First National contract (37 images), and pertinent exerpts on the Chaplin Studio from How to Make Movies (1918).

This edition is now long out-of-print, and for no other reason (we think) than the longer running time it sometimes fetches high prices for used copies on eBay.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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This budget DVD compilation follows the suit of other Chaplin collections: put as few films onto as many discs as possible, regardless of print quality, and sell them as cheap as possible. And don’t expect them to be mastered from anything but subpar 16mm reduction prints. However, this edition's source prints are OK, but the analog video masters have a significant number of videotape glitches (especially in A Day’s Pleasure). As for the disc mastering, there are a large number of pulldown frames with overlapping picture information, which creates jerky movement in fast action.

Don’t consider buying this collection. The First National films have all been released on DVD home video and The Kid on Criterion Blu-ray Disc in far superior editions transferred from 35mm prints.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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The quality of this DVD edition of The Kid is a pleasant surprise. The video transfer utilizes an excellent 35mm print that is only marred by very light speckling and a few examples of emulsion damage. The film opens without a main title, however the remainder of the print appears to be complete. The transfer is generously cropped, and the print features a broad range of greytones with very good image detail. Despite the relatively low video bit rate, the picture is acceptably smooth and is very watchable.

The Kid has previously appeared on DVD in a high-quality edition from CBS/Fox Home Video, produced by David Shepard.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This budget DVD compilation follows the suit of other Brentwood big box releases: put as many films onto five or six discs as possible, irregardless of print quality and sell them as cheap as possible. With so many quality versions of the later Chaplin films available, the chief attraction of this collection will be the presence of the 1914 Keystone films. But don’t expect them to be mastered from anything but 16mm reduction prints.

The documentary The Chaplin Puzzle, written by Joe Adamson, features narration by Burgess Meredith.

Don’t consider buying this collection for the later Chaplin films. The Essanay, Mutual and First National films have all been released on DVD home video in far superior editions transferred from 35mm prints (see below). The main attraction of this set is the fairly complete collection of the Keystone films (nine of the 35 films are not in the collection — one, Her Friend the Bandit [1914], is presumed lost).

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This budget DVD compilation follows the suit of other big box Chaplin collections: put as many films onto as many discs as possible, irregardless of print quality and sell them as cheap as possible. With so many quality versions of the later Chaplin films available, the chief attraction of this collection will be the presence of the 1914 Keystone films. But don’t expect them to be mastered from anything but 16mm reduction prints.

Don’t consider buying this collection for the later Chaplin films. The Essanay, Mutual and First National films have all been released on DVD home video in far superior editions transferred from 35mm prints (see below). The main attraction of this set is the fairly complete collection of the Keystone films (nine of the 35 films are not in the collection — one, Her Friend the Bandit [1914], is presumed lost).

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is likely accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting recordings.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

Two of the films accompanied by a music score performed by Matthew John Marshall.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available from Reelclassicdvd.com through . . .