When cinephiles think of the silent era, Charlie Chaplin and his iconic Little Tramp character are the first to come to mind. Chaplin wrote, directed and starred in many films throughout his illustrious career -- most famously City Lights, The Gold Rush, Modern Times and The Great Dictator. Despite many decades passing since those movies were made, they are still discussed by film historians and movie buffs as essentials that helped shape modern cinema.

There's one Chaplin movie that's not as popular as those iconic films, but is just as important to movie history. The Kid, Chaplin's silent, debut feature-length film, is celebrating its centennial this year.

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Although by 1921 Chaplin had directed and starred in several short films as the Tramp, The Kid was his first movie with a running time of over an hour. The film cost $250,000 to make and it took five and half months to film, which was considered a very long shoot at the time. Yet despite the big budget and lengthy production, The Kid is a simple story about the Tramp taking care of his adopted son, played by Jackie Coogan (who would grow up to play Uncle Fester in The Addams Family).

Knowing Chaplin's future success, The Kid launched one of the great careers in movie history. But the film has endured for a century as one of the best silent films of its era -- amongst those films that have survived and are still accessible -- because it's one the earliest examples of comedy and drama blending together.

The movie begins with a title card stating, "A picture with a smile--and perhaps, a tear." The first scene plays out like a drama with a woman leaving a charity hospital with her newborn child, as the father lost interest in her and the baby. Being poor and unmarried, she reluctantly leaves the infant in a car with a hand-written note hoping he'll have a better life. But then two thieves steal the car not knowing the baby is in the back seat, and when they discover him they abandon him in an alley. That's when the Tramp finds him.

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While The Tramp tries to hand off the child to someone, discovering the mother's note moves him. He names the child John and looks after him over the next five years, eventually becoming his sidekick in a window glazier scheme. That first act has little comedy in it, but gets audiences invested immediately with an emotional story -- that way the humor and gags throughout the rest of The Kid inspires more genuine reactions because they're already rooting for these characters to succeed.

When it looks like John is going to be taken away to an orphanage, the viewers root for the Tramp to get him back in a thrilling chase scene. Heartstrings are also tugged when the mother returns, now a wealthy actress, and interacts with the Tramp and kid without realizing who John is. After an hour of ups and downs, and a dream sequence quite impressive for its time, The Kid wraps up with a warm hearted ending.

100 years later, The Kid is still one of the most influential dramedies of all time and practically invented the genre. It's difficult to make audiences genuinely laugh and cry in the same presentation, but Chaplin made it look easy in his first of many great motion pictures. Some of the most beloved movies ever are comedy-dramas including Forrest Gump, Little Miss Sunshine and Parasite, and each have Chaplin to thank for introducing the genre's foundations.

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