The 1921 silent film starring Charlie Chaplin as a tramp who adopts a child is The Kid.
Chaplin plays his famous Tramp, who discovers an abandoned baby and reluctantly tries to pass him on before compassion takes over. He names the boy John and raises him in a small, impoverished home. Five years later, the pair survive through a comic window-breaking scheme: the child breaks windows, and the Tramp, posing as a glazier, repairs them.
Jackie Coogan plays the Kid, giving one of the earliest celebrated child performances in cinema. The film balances slapstick comedy with a serious story about poverty, family, separation, and social welfare. The child’s biological mother, who abandoned him in distress, later becomes a successful actress and eventually finds him again.
The Kid was Chaplin’s first feature-length film as director. It was also written, produced, edited, and starred in by Chaplin. Modern Times, The Gold Rush, and City Lights are other major Chaplin films, but none matches this particular Tramp-and-child story.