Charlie Chaplin's Racing Film: Progress Without Change

When I think about car movies, the first thing that comes to mind is sexy people sitting in sexier cars doing nothing particularly interesting, but maybe that’s just because it’s a genre that is deeply unappealing to me. After all, why would a person who’s never learned to drive bother themselves with watching other people do it? Despite my negativity towards the genre, though, there are some racing films that are basically tolerable, and even some that can be said to be worth watching - though to be fair, I had to dig deep to find one I was willing to sit through. But that’s the magic of early cinema: not only are the films free of most of the dull genre tropes we've developed over the years, they’re also blissfully short. It's a good thing I decided to dig a little deeper, too, as Kid Auto Races at Venice turned out to be a genuinely enjoyable watch, not to mention that it’s an incredibly important film in cinematic history as it introduced audiences to Charlie Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” character. The film's core plot is about car races, but what makes it truly fascinating to watch is seeing just how far humanity has come - and how little we’ve changed.

For me, the film has the most watchable car races I’ve seen in film. Despite my complete disinterest in Formula 1 and the like, seeing what qualified as racecars back in 1914 is undeniably delightful. Even though the movie was filmed over a quarter of a century after cars were invented, they’re still bulky, cumbersome, and from a modern audience’s perspective, painfully slow to watch - there are even motorless “cars” being raced by being pushed down a ramp. The quaintness of seeing the crowds flocking to see cars bumble their way along the track leaves the audience with feelings of whimsy and nostalgia. It’s all real, too - Kid Auto Races at Venice was filmed at an actual racing event, so while the actors might be performing, the audience's reactions to both them and the races are real. It’s enchanting to see people so taken in by something modern racing fans would find impossibly dull, and at the same time, realising of how far we’ve come as a species leaves you feeling a sense of gentle pride.

But pride in human progress and ingenuity isn’t the real feeling that you take away from the film as a viewer. No, the main thing this film leaves you with is a deep feeling of connection and community, because, despite the technological progress we've experienced in the last century, the film shows us how little humanity has actually changed. It’s truly an accomplishment to have created a movie that still resonates so strongly over 100 years later. At the heart of the story is a man who sees a news camera and decides he's going to be on camera whether he's wanted or not; it’s deeply reminiscent of how you still find people sneaking into the background of newscasts to mess around or just get their five seconds of screentime. Chaplin’s increasingly stroppy behaviour as Henry Lehrman, director both of and in the film, tries to push him out of frame starts to feel rather reminiscent of modern-day “Karens”. Even though we may have made huge strides technologically, Kid Auto Races at Venice makes it clear that at our core, we haven’t changed at all. We’re just people who want to watch fast cars (though fast is a relative term here), laugh, and leave our mark on the world.

There are other aspects of this film that make it worth watching - I, for one, was surprised to see that filming techniques like breaking the fourth wall or making a faux documentary were already being used so early in cinema. But that’s also part of what Kid Auto Races at Venice teaches us: we shouldn’t look down on or underestimate those who came before us, because we’re fundamentally the same as them. Our cars might be faster, our movies might have sound and colour, but humanity is still what it’s always been. Was it Lehrman and Chaplin’s intention to so effectively depict the human experience when they made this film? It's unlikely, as they had no way of knowing how little humans would change over the next century, and yet they managed to do it. In the end, Kid Auto Races at Venice is a timeless story about who humanity really is - all in a simple 6.5 minute film about a day at the racetrack.

Watch the whole film here and let me know if the film made you feel the same way in the comments!