Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Kid’s Auto Race (1914)

Indicative of the occasional practices of the Keystone Film Company during the years of 1913-1914, when the film release schedule exceeded their production capabilities, quick little films were either purchased or produced on the fly to fill out the split-reel films in the Keystone schedule. Sometimes the Keystone staff took advantage of civic events to serve as a backdrop to these largely improvised films. Kid’s Auto Race (1914) is a prime example of such a film.

In his second film role, Charles Chaplin appears for the first time in his famous makeup and wardrobe improvising as a motion picture camera ‘lens louse’ against the backdrop of a boy’s soapbox car race competition. Henry Lehrman is the frustrated film director who tries to keep Charlie out of the camera frame.

— Carl Bennett

This quality DVD edition has been mastered from a restoration conflation of two 35mm nitrate prints held by the British Film Institute, which has been transferred by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovita in Italy. The intertitles were digitally reset with texts from a rerelease print and with two original Keystone cards. The results are very-good to excellent.

The film is accompanied by a music score performed by Eric Beheim on a MIDI synthesizer.

The collection’s supplemental material includes Charlie et sa Belle [Charlie’s White Elephant] (1916), Inside the Keystone Project (2010) documenting the Chaplin Project (10 minutes), Silent Traces: The Keystone Locations (2010) with John Bengtson, author of Silent Traces (12 minutes), and a stills gallery.

Overall, the improvement in quality over previous home video editions is so great that you’ll toss your other Keystone Chaplin discs when you see this collection. Highly recommended!

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.