Kid Auto Races at Venice is a 1914 American film starring Charles Chaplin in which his "Little Tramp" character makes his first appearance in a film exhibited before the public. The first film to be produced that featured the character was actually Mabel's Strange Predicament; it was shot a few days before Kid Auto Races but released two days after it.
Synopsis
Made by Keystone Studios and directed by Henry Lehrman, the movie portrays Chaplin as a spectator at a "baby-cart race" in Venice, Los Angeles. The spectator keeps getting in the way of the camera and also interferes with the race, causing great frustration to the public and participants. The film was shot during the Junior Vanderbilt Cup, an actual race with Chaplin and Lehrman improvising gags in front of real-life spectators. Unusually, the camera breaks the fourth wall to show a second camera filming, to better explain the joke. At this stage Chaplin gets in the way only of the visible camera on screen, not the actual filming camera. In this way the filming camera takes on a spectator's viewpoint, and Kid Auto Races becomes one of the first public films to show a film camera and cameraperson in operation.
Reviews
In the year that the film was released, a reviewer from the silent movie periodical Bioscope wrote, "Some sensational happenings are witnessed during the contests between the baby cars, while the funny man persistently obstructs the eager cameramen in their operations." A reviewer from the silent movie periodical The Cinema noted, "Kid Auto Races struck us as about the funniest film we have ever seen. When we subsequently saw Chaplin in more ambitious efforts, our opinion that the Keystone Company had made the capture of their career was strengthened. Chaplin is a born screen comedian; he does things we have never seen done on the screen before."
By 1914, the Vanderbilt Cup had become an important automobile racing event in the United States, and the 1914 event was to be held in Santa Monica, California. The city decided to sponsor a junior version of the event, apparently with several classes of engines and with age limits for the drivers. Some classes had no engines and used a ramp to accelerate the cars in a manner similar to soap box derby races. Other classes used small engines. Chaplin's movie includes one scene shot at the bottom of the ramp used for the engineless races. There is no evidence that Junior Vanderbilt Cups were held either before or after the 1914 event. Actual silver cups were awarded.
