|
|
|
|
|
The Kid The heart of the story of The Kid is the relationship between the Tramp and the Kid, an orphaned child. The film begins with a poor unmarried woman (Edna Purviance) leaving the charity hospital with her newborn. "Alone," as the caption tells us, she decides to leave her baby in a car parked outside a mansion. The woman presumably hopes that this wealthy family will find and adopt her child, however, before this can occur, the car is taken by gangsters. The gangsters dump the baby in an alley, where the Tramp finds him beside a trash can. The Tramp first tries to hand off the baby to a mother out on a walk with her own baby, telling her, "You dropped something." He seems genuinely bewildered at the woman's denial of ownership, and goes so far as to place the baby in the woman's carriage. In the end, and mostly so as to avoid the attention of a strolling policeman, the Little Tramp takes the baby home. The film then skips five years, during which the baby becomes the Kid. Co-star Jack Coogan is not outfitted as the Tramp in miniature; the two do seem, however, of the same stuff. Though the Kid calls Charlie "Dad," the two are presented on terms of relative equality. Their life together is one of give and take: Charlie makes sure the Kid has washed behind his ears; the Kid breaks windows in the neighborhood so Charlie can felicitously appear as a glazier offering his services. Two scenes in the film show Charlie and the Kid eating: in one Charlie cooks; in the other, the Kid cooks; in both, the food is divided exactly in half. Both are outsiders: an orphan and a tramp, seemingly forgotten by society. The difference between them is that while Charlie is outside the social structure by choice-he never laments his downfall or otherwise provides any clue of a life different from his present one-the Kid is outside because he was dumped there. Furthermore, society wants him back. Dramatic development in the film stems from an episode during which Charlie shows a doctor the note the Kid's mother left with him; from this point on, various forces gather against Charlie to reclaim the Kid and place him in a "proper" home. The collective efforts of the doctor, the orphanage authorities, the newspapers and even the manager of a flophouse in which Charlie and the Kid seek refuge all converge on the duo. They are trapped in a pattern of capture, escape and recapture. After the Kid is definitively taken away by the authorities and Charlie returns to their house alone, he finds the door unyielding; he is locked out. At this point in the film Charlie does something very uncharacteristic: he slumps down and goes to sleep. An elaborate dream sequence ensues. Charlie's dream in The Kid is "a dejected. . . dream of heaven" (Kuriyama 31), in which various characters from the film reappear adorned with wings. Even the neighborhood dogs have wings and fly. The Kid appears, also winged, and takes Charlie "shopping" for his own pair. The Tramp's wings are a source of irritation: they do not seem to fit correctly, they itch. This "Dreamland" is a negative image of Charlie's mode of living; in it his physical comfort and freedom are diminished. But what is the nature of wings which are purchased? It is in part the Tramp's lack of purchasing power that enables his mobility in the world. He is not confined by the class structure because he is not party to it. The wings are degraded by the implication that anyone--and anything--can buy them. Flying dogs seem subversive, not angelic, and when "Sin" enters the gate of heaven to tempt Charlie, the "dejected" vision of heaven begins to seem more like an unmitigated vision of something gone terribly awry. Spurred by a demonic personage, a nymph flirts with Charlie. Her lover is jealous, and he and Charlie fight. A winged policman breaks up the fight, and in order to get away, Charlie uses his awkward flying skills. But the policeman shoots him down--dead. The Kid runs to him, kneels over him, then disappears. The policeman shakes the Tramp, props him in his doorway, and continues to shake him. At this point, Charlie comes out of the dream. A policeman is standing over him, shaking him. The policeman leads him away. Charlie has not been arrested, however; the policeman takes him to the mansion of the Kid's mother--she is now a star of the stage. The film ends with the Kid embracing Charlie and the mother thanking the policeman and inviting the Tramp inside. In addition to the forging of a deep emotional bond with the Kid, this film also presents an aspect of the Tramp's development having to do with his increased dealings with society's structure of authority. The two seem related. Certainly, the Tramp had encounters with the police in the short films, but he usually he evaded the officer and quickly ended the incident. The police presence in The Kid is of a greater degree of intensity: there is literally a policeman around every corner. There are also the imposingly Victorian "country doctor" and the orphanage authorities. The Tramp does not have direct contact with the gangsters who dump the Kid in the alley, but their actions do affect him. The presence of the gangsters serves to indicate a difference between the Tramp and the outlaws. Both are on the outside. The Tramp, though, is not so removed as to be "above the law." The authority structure wears him down and takes from him the child he loves, but that does not cause him to abandon that love. Charlie gained resiliance in his first long film. He had always been able to bounce back, but the films of the twenties matched his physical resiliance with emotional sustenance. Perhaps because it is a transitional film, the ending of The Kid is not completely satisfying--does the Tramp marry the Lady? or does he only get visiting rights? These questions having to do with the Tramp's ability to fit into the social structure remained open for future films to address. |
