The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, March 30-April 5
Directed by Charles Lane
Lane’s nearly silent black and white comedy transplants Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid to the grimy streets of 1980s Greenwich Village. Lane plays a destitute street artist who, after witnessing a brutal alleyway murder, becomes the unlikely guardian of the victim’s small child. The tramp’s interactions with the toddler are charming and playful (the pair’s obvious chemistry a result of their real-life father-daughter relationship), yet the action never dips into cloying sweetness. Lane tiptoes between effervescent physical comedy and grim documentary realism, placing his Chaplin-inspired gags in abandoned buildings, homeless shelters, and frostbitten city streets. The juxtaposition between the film’s silent cinema influences and contemporary urban setting are best experienced in the soundtrack, which shifts between traditional orchestral cues and pre-Seinfeld slap bass riffs. A.J. Serrano (April 5, 7pm at the Metrograph; Q&A with Lane follows)