“The proper care and attention.”

The titular kid giddily throws a rock out of sight to frame left in a full-body shot. In the reverse shot, we see a window break. The kid runs away, and Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp wanders into the shot of the house carrying glass panels on his back. He fixes the old woman’s newly-shattered window; meanwhile, the kid continues throwing rocks through other people’s windows until a police officer catches sight of him during his neighborhood rounds, and the kid’s mischievous escapades grind to a halt.

The kid acts like he’s innocently playing with a rock, and the officer smiles. The tension drops, and the kid sprints away. The officer laughs and carries on with his business, until he walks by a smashed window; putting two and two together, he looks back toward the kid in a huff, debating whether or not to chase after him. He chooses not to act, but then happens to walk past the Tramp applying sealant to the woman’s newly-fixed window.

The scene cuts to a close-up shot of glass with a question mark sprayed painted on it… reflecting, presumably, the officer’s questioning gaze from here on out.

The old woman pays the Tramp for his services while the officer suspiciously stares him down, starting to unravel the mystery before him. The Tramp hastily walks away, but is intercepted by the kid in full view of the policeman; the officer chases after them, having pieced the whole story of their shenanigans one small piece of information at a time.

The scene irises out, and it appears as though this comedic vignette is finished — but in the next scene, Chaplin escalates it one step further. A title card identifies the next vignette as “Job Number 13,” an unlucky one; the Tramp once again fixes a window, this time for a much younger woman, with whom he flirts.

Unfortunately for him, the woman ends up being the wife of the suspicious cop. He comes home, the Tramp realizes the error of his ways, and our impoverished protagonist narrowly escapes from the arms of the law once again.

This sequence is one of the most overtly comedic in The Kid, one of the Tramp’s most dramatically serious adventures. But it’s not just a simple gag — it’s actually a well-constructed sequence of comedic suspense, during which the audience knows information before a key character does, then watches that character learn that information piece by piece over time instead of all at once, building anticipation as we wait for the ball to drop.

Then, Chaplin escalates the scenario further, knowing that it’s funnier for the comedic sequence to be wrapped up with a bow instead of being presented merely as a singular moment in time.

Charlie Chaplin’s movies are, superficially, fairly simple. Scenes mostly play out in wide shots with a few close-ups inserted for dramatic or comedic effect. Storylines are simple. But what is impressive about them — besides their general humor and charm — is that the details and sequencing of individual events feel so thoughtfully laid out, even as the Tramp himself whimsically appears to be a reactive fellow to whom nothing ever goes according to plan.

The details matter in a Chaplin film. We smile and laugh when the Tramp pokes his foot through a hole in his bedsheet and, instead of tossing it aside, sits up and turns the sheet into a poncho; it’s humorous when the kid then tries to lick the sharp edge of a knife and the Tramp worriedly taps on it to show him which side can go in his mouth and which can’t. But the comedic details aren’t just there to be funny — they indicate character traits. The Tramp is poor, yes, but also resourceful and kind.

The Kid is about the Tramp unwittingly becoming a surrogate father to an abandoned child, and how society deems him to be unfit because of his social status, even though he is a much more loving parent that the wealthy woman who abandoned him would have been.

In behavior as much as circumstance, the details matter in telling this story. It is important that, when the Tramp finds the baby in the streets at the start of the film, he doesn’t just pick him up and happily take him home. The Tramp’s initial reaction mirrors that of the kid’s biological mother — he’s uncomfortable, and he tries to pass the baby off to someone else because he doesn’t want to bear the responsibility of raising a child. He only takes the child in the first place because he can’t escape the suspicious gaze of a police officer.

Throughout the film, we see the biological mother enjoying a successful career, and giving back to society by taking care of orphans — and we develop at least some level of sympathy for her, because she genuinely exhibits at least some guilt about her abandonment of her child. But while she thrives, the Tramp survives, living day to day with her child in a rough part of town.

By the end of the movie, the Tramp is running across rooftops and fighting with social services workers in the back of a speeding truck in order to save the boy. We’re thrilled — and touched — because in spite of his undesirable circumstances, and in spite of not wanting to be a parent (just like the kid’s biological mother), the Tramp takes on the responsibility of caring for and raising this kid. In so doing, he becomes a better person and lives a life filled with greater joy than there was before.

The Kid ends with an odd sequence in ‘dreamland’; the Tramp falls asleep on his own doorstep and fades into a pleasant dream that turns into a nightmare, ending with the kid devastated at the Tramp’s untimely demise.

Though it’s a bit of a stylistic break from the rest of the film, the ‘dreamland’ sequence wordlessly indicates to us on a thematic level that The Tramp, whom we first see as a carefree, selfish opportunist, has truly and fully changed for the better because he bore the weight and responsibility of raising the kid. His nightmare isn’t about him dying — it’s about doing something that causes the kid to feel abandoned, and suffer because of it.

The sequence is a final but major example of how quirks, behaviors, and whimsies both big and small indicate character traits, narrative arcs, and themes throughout The Kid — and in much of Chaplin’s work.