User Reviews

This was the last film starring Charlie Chaplin and he went on to do only a very brief cameo in the last film he directed, THE COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG. And, while it lacks the quality of many of his famous full-length films, it is well worth your time.

One of the reasons I say that the film lacks quality is the unevenness of the film. While the music Chaplin composed is very good and parts of the film are quite touching, other parts look a bit choppy and some of the camera work is rough. But, considering that mediocre Chaplin is still head and shoulders above most other work, this can all be forgiven.

Chaplin plays the deposed benevolent king of a fictional European country. When he arrives in America, he is treated like a celebrity and he intends to make it his new home. However, over time his opinion about living here sours--partly due to the intensity and shallowness of American culture but mostly due to the zealous anti-Communist movement of the day.

The film consists of two parts. The initial portion is pretty light-hearted and involves Chaplin's becoming acquainted with American culture (such as TV, Rock and Roll and even plastic surgery). While I have heard some comment that this makes the movie seem too episodic and lacks focus, I actually liked this part and found it charming--even though not all the gentle ribbing worked in every case.

The second part begins when Chaplin visits an odd "progressive school" in the city. Here children are encouraged to express themselves and avoid inhibitions. In reality, it means that the kids are brats and have absolutely no discipline. This is a pretty funny segment--particularly when Chaplin is introduced to the editor of the school paper (actually played by Chaplin's 10 year-old son, Michael). This kid (Rupert) is incredibly obnoxious and instead of discussing politics with the democratic-natured king, he "speachifies" about the evils of all government and sounds a lot like Leon Trotsky! Although it is not apparent at first, this little vignette actually changes the course of the film. A bit later, Rupert is seen wandering about New York in the snow all alone. The king sees him and takes pity despite their political differences. He feeds and clothes the kid and Rupert repays him by telling people that he is the king's nephew. Well, people think that because the kid sounds like a Communist that the king must also be one--leading to a lot of confusion and a few laughs.

It turns out that the kid had run away from the school after his parent had been forced to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The parents admit that they had been Communists in the past but refused to implicate others, so they are jailed for contempt. Next, the committee subpoenas Chaplin to testify while federal agents begin badgering Rupert to get him to talk. This leads to a very tiring and badly written part of the film. On the way to testify, Chaplin gets his finger stuck in a fire hose and he eventually has to charge into the committee room with it still stuck on his hand. Then, the hose gets connected to another hose and turned on--at which point, Chaplin thoroughly douses the committee. This part of the film just isn't very funny and lasts way too long.

Despite this hosing, the scene abruptly ends and newspapers announce that Chaplin is cleared and he is once again beloved by the American people. Why and how this occurs is beyond me, as the last scene ended with the committee charging him with contempt! It is like there is a missing scene explaining how this all occurred. Regardless, Chaplin is tired of the hysteria about Communism and vows to return to Europe. On the way, he stops to see Rupert and finds his spirit is broken...as Rupert was tricked into betraying his parents' former associates. The film then ends as it shows Chaplin and his trusted aid flying out of New York.

While Chaplin denied that this film was an attempt to get back at America for its shabby treatment of him in the early 50s, it is pretty obvious that this movie is a comedic and very poignant attempt to do precisely that. It reminds me a lot of the Woody Allen film THE FRONT, though it preceded it by almost two decades. While it was true that there was significant infiltration of our government by Stalinist spies (based on recent data released by the Kremlin), along with legitimate concerns many innocent people were hurt just because of their political leanings. Chaplin's leftist beliefs and movies that depicted the little guy as being oppressed by an uncaring Capitalist society came back to haunt him during this era of fear. In the end, he was forced to return to Europe to live out the remainder of his life. So, in many, many ways, this movie was an autobiographical film wrapped in comedy.

Now as for the good and the bad about this film. The film has many amusing little segments and is quite charming. Its autobiographical aspects make for an interesting insight into Chaplin's psyche and even without that, it is a pretty good film.

A KING IN NEW YORK was Charles Chaplin's penultimate film and his first in his native Britain.The actual plot,that of an exiled European monarch (King Shadov) and his various adventures in the USA's biggest city,was most certainly intended irony by Chaplin as he himself was in exile from the US after years of harassment and condemnation from McCarthyites,the HUAC,moralists and various other right-wing factions.It was many years before he was persuaded to return to the US in the early 1970's (to receive an honorary Oscar),and indeed this film was not shown there until around the same era.

Chaplin clearly had many issues he wanted to address at the state of American society at this time,and although it is perfectly laudable to bring up these many subjects in a satirical film,the perceptions of US society involved (film,television,advertising,plastic surgery,education,etc.) are sadly not all that funny,cutting or ruthless enough,but rather half-hearted and uninventive.The best moments occur in the first half or so,with an adroit lampoon of film trailers and widescreen ratios;some neatly executed (but all too brief) mime concerning the description of caviar and turtle soup,and the highlight being King Shadov's struggle to contain his laughter during a slapstick nightclub act after undergoing plastic surgery.

However,other would-be mordacious barbs at other subjects such as TV and advertising are rather placidly administered (at least Chaplin's skit on a reality-style TV show is surprisingly prescient),and the second half of the film turns far more serious when the matter of the McCarthyite witch hunts comes to prominence.The film certainly gets bogged down at this point with tedious,witless,pompously over-sermonising dialogue,most of which is uttered by Chaplin's ten-year old son Michael,portraying a boy that the King meets during a visit to a school,whose parents are affected by the anti-communist purges.To be fair,Chaplin Jnr actually gives a fine performance,perhaps a slightly more assured one than his celebrated father whose clipped,rather hesitant manner of speaking conveys a reluctance to enunciate too excessively (not very surprising,as Chaplin always made it clear he was far more comfortable with pantomime than speech).This may be the reason why he gave his son the most sententious lines in his script,which don't as much come across as normal conversation but rather as gross political pronouncements,further emphasised by a continually wagging finger.Chaplin was justified to feel bitter at his treatment by the American authorities,but the sledgehammer non-subtlety he employed to make his point here was woefully superfluous,and it is only his son's natural adeptness at performing that prevents the scenes involved slipping this side of total embarrassment.

Because it was produced in the UK,the film further suffers within it's limitations of monetary production compared to the US.Much stock footage of the Big Apple is utilised,plus some rather obvious back projection and super-impositions,giving the film a rather stagey,claustrophobic if not cheap feel,with famous cameraman Georges Perinal unable to give the film a visually stylish look with the unexceptional set designs at his disposal.Most of the British supporting cast don't make any attempt with American accents,though the inimitable Sid James comes off best in this aspect,with Dawn Addams also not too bad with her transatlantic drawl (though her occasional romantic mutterings with an obviously ageing Chaplin are a trifle creepy).Familiar British performers make brief appearances (such as George Woodbridge and Jerry Desmonde),with Oliver Johnston as the King's confidante coming off best,and an unexpected cameo from a very young Frazer Hines (he of EMMERDALE FARM) as an unhygienic cookery pupil at the school King Shadov visits.

If Chaplin had not concentrated too much on the political elements and pared down the masses of straight,expository dialogue related to this,A KING IN NEW YORK would have probably been a quicker,more biting invective on America in the 50's.It is therefore mostly the case that only brief sequences in the first hour come off with any sort of distinction;the rest,predominately an essay on his personal bitterness,should've been disposed of.

RATING:6 out of 10.

The nice thing about film is sometimes time has a way of improving our outlook on once-failed films. Sometimes they're just ahead of their time like The King In New York. Charles Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, and starred in The King In New York as the deposed King Shahdov fleeing an imaginary European country. He makes his way to New York City where he is inundated by the excesses and inconveniences of American life. The film contains nice pot shots taken at modern American targets, such as commercialism, new technology, noisy nightclubs, plastic surgery, rock music, and perhaps even Edward R. Murrow's "Person to Person". However, I think Chaplin was aiming for a higher target than these: the individual compromising his values when forced to do so.

It's well known Chaplin was forced out of the United States for good in 1952. Between then and the making of this film, the H.U.A.C. hearings took their toll on the entertainment industry and private individuals as well. It's no surprise then Chaplin focused on those aspects of society closest to his personal concerns. The film tends to waver a bit in its second half. This is largely due to the communist hearing/witch hunt subplot involving Chaplin's son Michael, who plays the son of suspected leftist school teachers. Chaplin at first plays the scenario semi-serious, but then when he actually becomes victimized himself, he plays the climactic scene for laughs. After seeing the boy broken by government officials, the king consoles him before returning to his own country, exasperated with American life.

Clearly the film was ahead of its time. The public still had a sore spot for Chaplin at the time of its release, delaying its release in the United States some sixteen years. If the film had continued in its satirical vein during the second half of the film, it would have been more consistent in tone and in its focus. Instead we get an uneven film at the end, unsure of its focus. Shepperton Studios in England hampered Chaplin's normal creative process by limiting the shooting schedule. As a result, the film took only twelve weeks to shoot; where as, typically Chaplin would take up to a year to make a film previously. What happened to Chaplin in his last twenty-five years was unfortunate, and it's unfortunate for us he made only this film and one other before retiring for good. He composed the score for this film, (and the main theme is entitled The Sadness Goes On), and it's his last leading appearance in film. It's simultaneously entertaining and disappointing, and one wonders what Chaplin could have done with the material at his own studio had Shepperton not rushed it through production. **1/2 of 4 stars.

A KING IN NEW YORK is a curious film in the Chaplin-canon. It was his first film to be produced outside of Hollywood. It was the last film in which he had a starring role. It was his second to last completed film altogether. It is also by many regarded as his worst film, but while it is hard not to recognize that KING is uneven in places, I find it equally hard not to recognize its better qualities.

By the time he embarked upon the screen-play, Chaplin had been seeking for a story for his next film since his exile out of the United States in 1952. For a while he considered getting his beloved Tramp character back in the limelight, but abandoned this idea as he was getting too old for doing the sort of physical playfulness that was required from the character. He finally landed on the story of King Shadhov, who has eloped to New York as a revolution has taken place in his country. Nearly broke, the king is forced into making money in ways which might disturb his royal image. He acquaints a super-intelligent, albeit precocious kid named Rupert (Michael Chaplin), whose parents are suspected of being communist sympathizers during the prime of the McCarthy-era. Chaplin ridicules several aspects of contemporary American culture, including predictable movies, commercials, rock'n'roll, how plastic surgery is increasingly being used out of a obsessive desire to prevent age to be recognized, and Television; one sequence probably stands even more relevant today, when King Shadhov is invited to a gathering in which he, unbeknownst to him, is being filmed through hidden cameras and shown directly on TV…this was ages before reality-TV, folks.

What is usually criticized about the film is how Chaplin's personal bitterness over his exile is made too evident, and that he seems to be dealing with more problems than he can chew. In my eyes, these are not big problems; the satire may rarely be subtle, and it is obvious that the film is based on personal opinions of the creator, but such it had always been with Chaplin. Ever since the first films he made in which a conscious move to leave comment on the society can be traced, Chaplin's motive had not been as much to put the society to question as to let the society be the target of his comedy simply because he found lots of comic potential in it. I don't believe Chaplin would have made MODERN TIMES had he not seen the possibilities of making comedy out of the serious theme it covers. In the same way, he hardly made KING in a desire to let out his opinions, at least not solely so; rather, I believe that in search of new comedy material, he decided to use themes which had obsessed him much in the last few years, making the McCarthy-era and American culture obvious choices.

Chaplin tries to chew a lot, but I think he succeeds most of the time, as his covering of nearly every theme in the film somehow relate to one another. More importantly, I think much of the comedy is breathtakingly funny; when King Shadhov arrives at the airport, exclaiming to his ambassador that "We fooled them!", not realizing that a reporter has placed a microphone beneath his mouth, I laughed out loud, and it went louder pretty much throughout. One part which always makes me nearly roll on the floor in laughter is when Shadhov and his ambassador are having lunch right after Rupert has admitted to them that his parents have been members of the Communist party, making the two men so nervous they can't drink their coffee. It then knocks on the door, resulting in the ambassador getting his tongue paralyzed and being only able to shiver a series of "C-c-c-c-c-c-c…'s" until the person who knocked, a room service man, has left, whereupon the ambassador THEN exclaims totally exhausted, "…Come in!" The timing is perfect from both Chaplin and Oliver Johnston, who in fact overshadows Chaplin's performance a few times in the film.

Yet, despite my conviction that A KING IN NEW YORK is a far cry better than its reputation claims, it suffers from inevitable short-comings. Some of the parts in which the comedy is not present are rather dull. I don't get what purpose the queen in the film fulfills, other than making way for an obvious conclusion to the story; the king and the queen has decided to divorce on the king's insistence, but they part on friendly terms. A scene follows in which the two of them chat about how the king once thought the queen was too young to know her best, but it turned out that she weren't, and so on, and the queen is then not granted a mention again until the very end, when it turns out she won't get a divorce after all; it's remarkable how these news fail to affect me each time I view the film. Also, here and there the dialogue feels rather superfluous. It has been pointed out that Chaplin here was working without his own studio and employees, for the first time in forty years, which possibly made him less open for criticism from others while making the film, or he may not even have been offered it. One should also note that Chaplin didn't remain blind to KING's lesser qualities; several years later, he wrote that he felt "rather uneasy about the whole film." Chaplin went too far. A KING IN NEW YORK is by no means his best film, but it must rank among his funniest, and is quite thought-provoking every once in a while.