I wanted to show my kids a Charlie Chaplin movie, and I want to find one that they’ll think is really funny. To appeal to kids, it should probably have a lot of silly, slapstick stuff going on. I don’t know that they would necessarily the humor of two people interacting in a silent movie.
I’ve seen clips of his movies, but I don’t know which ones they were and I’ve never seen a whole movie. I saw someone in another thread talking about “Gold Rush” which got me thinking about this.
Go for a collection of the Mutual shorts. Before he made features, Chaplin directed and starred in a series of two-reel (about 20 min.) short subjects, and some still feel this represents his best work. Certainly the films he made for Mutual studios are the best sustained effort he ever made; pretty much every one is a masterpiece. They should be ideal for kids (never having tested them myself I can’t be sure): they’re short and they have very little plot (and few title cards) to follow. Look for titles such as “The Rink,” “The Floorwalker,” “Easy Street,” “The Pawnshop,” “The Vagabond,” and “The Adventurer.”
The best versions put out of these so far are probably these VHSes, which you can still find in some video stores. I think effort has been made to put decent versions of the shorts on DVD, but I don’t know how successful they’ve been. At all costs, avoid “budget” Chaplin collections that may have some of the above films; they’re put together with shitty prints and bad soundtracks and are generally a disgrace to the films.