Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

mymangodfrey To what others have said about this short's historical importance, I'll just add that the movie is also very funny. The Tramp's seriousness, curiosity, and vanity make this weird prank of a short charming and silly.The movie also drips with cool period atmosphere. I wish more of the Keystone shorts had used this guerilla-shooting-at-real-events approach.

Film_Nitrate It's strangely appropriate that this should be the first intertitle of the first film to be released that featured Charlie Chaplins' immortal character: The Tramp. From his very first appearance, primitive though it is, he is undeniably engaging, though there is nothing in Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. to suggest the character was endearing enough to be a long-term fixture, let along the icon he became. Considering Chaplin himself would go on to appear in a staggering 35 films over the next 12 months for Keystone, it seems it was just as impossible to keep him away from the camera. But this is the place it all started for The Little Tramp.A century has now passed since the Keystone comedies producer Mack Sennett decided to make a short film with director Henry Lehrman and new actor Charles Chaplin at the Kid Auto Races on Saturday January 10, 1914, and to watch the 6-minute film today is to look back onto a world completely alien to anyone alive today. Even the title is cumbersome and obscure. The Kid Auto Race, in this case the Junior Vanderbilt Cup Race, was a short-lived event where the streets were closed off in Venice and young teenage boys were encouraged to race each other in their own home-made carts, usually powered by motorcycle engines. The race was officially administered, and for the winner there was a considerable prize of $250 on offer. To see boys racing what are effectively motorcars around the roads, with no safety equipment whatsoever, only adds to the modern disconnection with the film. It's to this usual backdrop that Chaplin debuted his creation to a large audience for the first time.The most fascinating aspect of Kid Auto Races is the reaction of the audience to Chaplins' presence. Film cameras were still uncommon at the time, so there would have been a degree of excitement about appearing in a film (one woman apparently had no intention of being immortalised on nitrate, and visibly hides behind a programme for the duration of a scene with Chaplin right in front of her), but more than that we see their amusement and interest in the strange looking fellow jumping around in front of the camera. Mack Sennett had found the Tramp character hilarious when Chaplin first experimented with it on the Keystone lot, but looking around the many faces in the crowd, they are all smiling or laughing, even if they are slightly bemused. If this was an indication of how audiences might react when the character was shown in theatres across the country, then it was a positive one.The film is all improvised, with Chaplin and the "director" the only apparent actors. There's also the virtually unprecedented scenes in which the camera is filming another cameraman hand-cranking the camera on screen which Chaplin is larking around in front of – in one of the first examples of this happening. Despite this on-screen camera, Chaplin regularly breaks the fourth wall, and it's inconsistent throughout which camera is being addressed.As entertainment, even the most enthusiastic film historian would have a tough job making a case for Kid Auto Races aging well. The film is almost like an artists' original sketch for what would eventually become a magnificent painting. There are many better Chaplin shorts, and many better shorts featuring The Tramp. But as a historical document, showing the origins of this great character, this is absolutely invaluable and it's easy to imagine in another 100 years people watching this to see exactly how Charlie Chaplin debuted The Little Tramp.

WakenPayne ...But To Be Honest I Don't Particularly Care. After I Saw "The Kid", "The Gold Rush" & "City Lights" I Must've Gone On A Chaplin Craze. I Went To See This. This Movie Overall Doesn't Have Much In The Way Of Laughs...No Let Me Clarify That This Movie Doesn't Have ANYTHING In The Way Of Laughs. This Would Only Be Watched By People Who Are Chaplin Fans & Want To Honestly Say "Yep I've Seen The Tramp's First Appearance On Screen" But To Your Average Joe To Charles Chaplin Movies This Movie Overall (At The Risk Of Sounding Unoriginal) Sucks.The Plot Is Where Chaplin Walks In The Way Of The Auto-Race & Gets Hit & Told To Go Back To His Seat. This Tramp Is Not The Same Character! The Tramp In The Full Length Movies Is Kind & Somewhat Lovable. This One Is Crude & Somewhat Someone That You Never Want To Meet. Overall I Hated This Movie & Nobody Should Ever Have To See It.

Michael DeZubiria There is some disagreement over whether or not this is really the first film in which Chaplin performed as the beloved Tramp, since apparently Mabel's Strange Predicament was filmed a month earlier (although released two days later), but the interest of the film as the first time that audiences saw his famous character, as well as the fact that he was clearly still learning about it himself, remains clear. This was long before the times of screenplays and film scripts, and it is clear from watching the film that it is completely ad-libbed, but what is also clear is not only the talent but also the symbolism and the foreshadowing of Chaplin's later career, which Chaplin could not even have known he was doing himself.A lot of people have made the mistake of judging this film based on the quality of Chaplin's later work, which is ridiculous not only because the film was made during such an embryonic period of film history, but also because less than a half a year before it was made, Chaplin was acting on stage in England and knew absolutely nothing about film-making. Only a few years before this film was made, a film that depicted a group of people simply walking past the camera or people jumping into a lake was considered successful. The very thought of a "moving picture" had itself not lost its sense of being a novelty, so this film, if anything, was ahead of its time.What is also worth noting is that, in the world's first look at Chaplin's most famous character, we get such a clear sense of his love of the crowd and his desire to be in front of the camera. It is very important when watching these early films to keep in mind the historical context in which they were made, and not only the films made by Chaplin but from anyone else who was making them during this period. This is the very beginning of film-making in Los Angeles, a rare look at one of the cinema's biggest talents literally learning his talent on camera in a young Hollywood. To write the film off because of simple comedy or time-damaged quality is absurd.First of all, I am immediately fascinated by the film because of the fact that it was filmed in Venice, California, where I lived until about two months ago. Nothing is recognizable, since it was filmed 90 years ago and most of the setting is covered by crowds of people, but it should also be noted that Chaplin is literally trying on the costume which would soon make him one of the most famous people in the world, and in this six-minute comedy he is wandering around in a film learning his own act. That people today immediately demand high-budget quality from a film like this is ludicrous, to say the least.It's also interesting to consider the fact that, while the film is very, very simple and the improvised comedy is not complex in any way, it is also very real and fits perfectly as an introduction to Chaplin as an actor and the Tramp as an everyday character. Watch any live, on-location news broadcast today and look at what any jerk standing behind the camera is trying to do, and the realism of some guy at the auto races, the Tramp, wandering in front of the camera and mugging makes even more sense. It's also interesting to see the people in the background, curious about this new film thing, obviously staring directly at the camera and watching the filming.Chaplin, as he did in Making A Living, his first film, plays a bit of an unlikable character, but only unlikable as compared to what the Tramp would later become. He was a cheat and a swindler in Making A Living, while here he is just an annoying passer-by who won't go away. The film is book-ended by odd clippings of a note to "his best girl," and it is unclear why he "made tracks for the track," but for whatever reason, he was there and made it his mission to be in front of the camera of an increasingly irritated cameraman as much as possible.The cameraman that Charlie is constantly blocking is played by Henry Lehrman, who directed the first few of Chaplin's comedies and with whom Chaplin never had a very positive relationship, either on screen or off. So many people are immediately put off by the technical crudity or stylistic simplicity or physical decay of films like this, but I think that they are even more fascinating for reasons like this. Filmed more than 90 years ago, it is still a clear look at Chaplin's budding career, both on and off the screen.Only a few months later, he would begin directing his own films and his nearly unmatched career in film-making would be launched. Anyone with even a mild interest in film history or silent films should not miss this one, as it is a major landmark in cinematic history and the career of one of its biggest stars. For those of you that demand complex plots and polished film-making, maybe you should stick to watching modern film.