It is the 100th anniversary of Charlie Chaplin’s first feature The Kid, a masterpiece of silent cinema that still maintains its artistic value unchanged today. To remember its value and pay homage to the style and great creative vein of Chaplin, who was not only an actor and director of his films, but also an author, screenwriter, producer and not least composer, the Orchestra Italiana del Cinema, with the contribution of the Italian Ministry of Culture and in collaboration with Charlie Chaplin ™ © Bubbles Incorporates SA, organizes three events which include the screening of the film with the live performance of the original soundtrack arranged and performed on the piano by Maude Nelissen.
On Friday 10 December, at 9pm, and Saturday 11 December, in double performance at 4pm and 9pm, the Dutch pianist who worked closely with the latest arranger of Chaplin’s music, Eric James, and has always been dedicated to ‘musical accompaniment for silent films, the entire score of “The Kid (in Italian: Il Monello) will therefore play, in sync with the images, on an exceptional stage: that of the renovated Parioli Theater in Rome.

The soundtrack was composed by Chaplin at an already advanced age in 1971, exactly 50 years after the release of the film: the author had in fact decided to cut some scenes that he considered outdated by time, and to give a broader musical breath to the work: he composed eighteen distinct movements in his own hand and entrusted to his faithful collaborator Eric James the task of transcribing them on the staff.

The English arranger and composer Eric Rogers was called to orchestrate the music and direct the recording session. The reissued version was recorded in a single day, on October 25 of that year and helped make the film an extraordinary success across the country, where it remained on the bill for months. On the evening of April 4, a few days before being awarded an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement that should have repaid him at least in part of the exile that Hollywood had forced him to, an immense crowd welcomed Charlot at the entrance of Lincoln Center in New York for a first of the version of the film with the new soundtrack.
Tickets for the triple performance on sale on the Vivaticket circuit.