The Cinematheque

To ring in Charlie Chaplin’s 130th birthday this year, Film Club presents a special Father’s Day screening of Chaplin’s sublime feature-length debut, ​“a picture with a smile—and perhaps, a tear.” A touching silent comedy with roots in Chaplin’s own Dickensian childhood, The Kid has Charlie’s Tramp adopting a young boy (five-year-old Jackie Coogan, in a star-making turn) who’s been abandoned by a single mom. Charlie supports the child by working as a travelling glazier, and fights efforts to send him away to an orphanage. In the meantime, the mother becomes a rich opera singer. Perhaps Chaplin’s most accomplished marriage of humour and heart, this agile 53-minute treasure, a colossal international success in 1921, ​“remains one of Chaplin’s masterpieces and one of the best remembered and most loved of all motion pictures” (Theodore Huff, Charlie Chaplin). Silent with intertitles and musical score.