“Kid Auto Races at Venice”: Revisiting the Short That Introduced Chaplin’s “Little Tramp”
Originally published on Flavorwire, 2/7/14 The camera first finds the little fellow on the edge of the frame. A cop moves him along, and he wanders, quite accidentally, into the dead center, where he stands for a moment before turning around, presumably at the behest of the cameraman. And then, for the first time, he realizes he is on camera. He smiles, then immediately straightens up, doing his best to look distinguished, and spends the rest of the film “accidentally” walking into the camera’s view and pulling focus. The film, a modest split-reeler called “Kid Auto Races at Venice,” was released on February 7, 1914 by Keystone Film Company. The star was a new Keystone contract player trying out a new character. His name was Charles Chaplin. Though it was the first one released, there is some disagreement, among Chaplin scholars, as to whether “Kid Auto Races” was, in fact, the first film where Chaplin played his iconic “Little Tramp”; Chaplin himself (in his autobiography) and bi...