Tramp classics
When Chaplin was on a (bread) roll...
THE KID/THE GOLD RUSH/THE CIRCUS U/PG/U
1921/25/27 OUT NOW DVD, BD
These three films show Charlie Chaplin – at that point probably the most famous man in the world – moving into features, extending and exploring his silent techniques. The Kid – at 55 minutes almost a feature – was his longest movie to date, teaming him with a mini-me in the form of seven-year-old Jackie Coogan. Slapstick and Victorian melodrama blend as Chaplin’s Tramp reluctantly adopts an abandoned infant, brings him up and comes to love him as they battle the pompous forces of law and respectability.
Six years later, Chaplin – now running his own independent studio under the United Artists banner – created what’s generally reckoned his silent masterpiece, The Gold Rush, with the Tramp as a highly improbable prospector amid the snows of the Alaska goldfields. Some classic scenes, including the dance of the bread rolls, Charlie’s boots being boiled up for dinner and the hut teetering over a precipice. Regrettably though, what we’ve got here is the sound version Chaplin devised 15 years later, burdened with his sentimental and superfluous narration. Last time out, the DVD carried the complete silent original as an extra. Not this time, alas.
Finally, there’s Chaplin’s last silent movie, The Circus, with Charlie as an inept dogsbody amid the circus troupe. Plagued by production problems, it feels bitty: some inspired set-pieces (Charlie disrupting a magic act; his tightrope walk hampered by monkeys; pursued by an ill-tempered donkey) are strung together on a routine unrequited-love plot. Extras on all three discs are lavish to the point of extravagance. Extras › Introductions › Featurettes › Outtakes › Rushes › Excerpts