The film is only about four minutes long, and it consists of nothing more that this single gimnick, repeated over and over. The “drunk” keeps hamming it up for the camera, growing ever more aggressive and determined to ignore the director. When the camera crew tries to photograph the end of the race, he comes running and skipping down the middle of the street, flapping his arms like a bird, tripping over the finish line; when stray kids wander between him and the camera, he shoves them in the face; when the director start knocking him out of the way, he dances around in little circles at the periphery of the shot and sticks out his tongue. Ultimately he “spoils” every scene in the newsreel.

He is of course Charlie Chaplin, and the film is Kid Auto Races at Venice, a minor landmark in cinema history because it is the first film in which Chaplin appeared in the costume of the Tramp.

James Naremore, Film Quarterly, Winter 1984-85