1. The Kid
Often forgotten in Chaplin's extensive oeuvre, The Kid is the strongest display of Chaplin's cinematic genius. His first feature film, The Kid clocks in at only 68 minutes long but it fits more in those minutes than many films twice as long. The Kid is a simple but brilliantly told story. A broke mother abandons her newborn son in the back of a car because she cannot afford to take care of it. Eventually, the child winds up in the hands of Chaplin's Tramp, who cares for it as his own. The two become partners in crime as the child throws rocks through windows only for the Tramp to show up minutes late to fix it for a small charge. When the boy becomes sick, the doctor discovers that the Tramp is not his father and the authorities attempt to place the boy in an orphanage. After a brilliant chase scene, The Tramp and the kid are reunited in one of the most emotional scenes in Chaplin's filmography. After a tough night on the run, the boy is reunited with his mother, who has since become extremely wealthy, and the film ends with all three walking together into her house. A phenomenal success upon its release, The Kid is one of the greatest of all silent movies and cemented Chaplin's status as a titan of film once and for all. The film fully showed off his talents as writer, actor, and director, and while it doesn't have the philosophical content or social importance of his later films, The Kid is the most purely entertaining and affecting of his films and might be his most rewatchable work.