“The Kid” may be my favorite Chaplin film. It doesn’t have the depth of his later films but the brilliant timing and trust in the audience to understand subtle cues already infuses Chaplin’s first feature film, a film which also catapulted Jackie Coogan to preeminence as cinema’s first child star. And Coogan set the bar very high for the child stars who followed.

The cinematic purity of this film, which simply tells a touching story superbly well without trying to shoehorn in a message or statement, is something I find refreshing 90 years later.