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DVD A King in New York / A Woman of Paris (2 Disc Special Edition)
A King in New York A King in New York, Charlie Chaplin's penultimate film--featuring his final starring performance--was made in 1957 but wasn't officially released in America until the '70s, when it, surprisingly enough, won an Oscar for Chaplin's score. What took so long? Thanks to his politics and unorthodox personal life, Chaplin was pretty roundly hated by the late '50s, but had the movie been better, someone might've brought it stateside sooner. Chaplin plays King Shahdov of Estrovia, on the lam when revolution grips his homeland. In New York, despite the occasional indignity, he's treated as royalty until he takes a stand against the commie-hunters, a plotline that hit way too close to home at the time (Chaplin, remember, was ahead of everyone in attacking Hitler when he made The Great Dictator). There's one inspired bit, as Shahdov orders dinner over the din of a supper club, but overall, the satire is strident, and Chaplin's takes on such things as technology and pop music make him look decidedly like an old fogey. --David Kronke
A Woman of Paris At the height of his popularity, Charlie Chaplin chose to make a straight dramatic feature--without himself in a starring role. The plot of A Woman of Paris is perhaps not new: after a tragic misunderstanding, a small-town girl (former Chaplin paramour and longtime co-star Edna Purviance) goes to Paris and becomes the mistress of a rich playboy (Adolphe Menjou). But if the outline is familiar melodrama, the film still looks remarkable for its measured, adult attitude toward its characters; they are not black or white, but complicated, sophisticated shades of gray. Menjou, in particular, is a charming and thoroughly delightful cad. The film's matter-of-fact spirit on the subject of how adults conduct their sexual lives is also impressive. Critics loved the picture, but audiences did not, and Chaplin soon returned to comedy. He can be glimpsed, disguised, in a one-scene walk-through as a clumsy train porter. --Robert Horton
Review(s): DVD A King in New York / A Woman of Paris (2 Disc Special Edition)
Uneven, but still a fine satire from Chaplin
"A King in New York" is a flawed film, but reflects the insanity of the 1950's Communist witch-hunts.
It's an odd film, though. It's a parody of 1950's America MADE in the 1950's. A lot of the gags (especially the CinemaScope parody) are great, though.
I think the main problem with the film has to do with it being a little bit long-winded in parts and too much plot fortification. Most of Chaplin's films only needed a tiny bit of a plot to be great. Overall, watch with an open mind and enjoy the very accurate parodies on the 50's.
Chaplin Fans -- Stay Away
This is a sad excuse for a comedy from a once-great filmmaker. Fans of Charlie Chaplin can only be saddened and depressed by this lugubrious waste of time. Chaplin vents his spleen at the U.S. (justifiably so), but his satire is ineffective and the slapstick just doesn't work.
There is a second film on this DVD, but "A Woman of Paris," while a wonderful film, is not a Chaplin comedy (he only makes a brief cameo appearance and if you don't know it's him you'll miss him completely), and needs to be seen on a big screen to do it justice. So I can't honestly recommend this DVD for most people. This is only for rabid Chaplin completists who must have everything he ever made. For the rest of us, go out and buy "City Lights" or "Modern Times" instead, and see Chaplin at his best and in his prime.
Chaplin was way ahead of his time in film and America
What I find amazing is that even in the year 2001 people are so brain-washed by our corporate media that they can complain about Chaplin's bashing the McArthy era. This embarassing chapter in America's history (up there with slavery, the "Jim Crow" south, and Japanese internment camps of WW2) was responsible for thousands of Hollywood job losses, the imprisonment of the great writer Ring Lardner, the expatriation of Chaplin, Paul Robeson, et al.
And all of this for a ridiculous "witch hunt" by some sanctimonious & hypocritical power-hungry politicians; with trumped up hearings gathered together faster than you can say "Monica." Well eventually it ended up backfiring on the anti-commie crowd of course, although I guess sure helped Ronald Reagan to be president of the Screen Actors Guild, then CA, and the White House weren't far behind (easy when you sell out enough I guess).
But gee, since Chaplin was up against these zealots (who are the real "anti-American" ones if people actually knew their history), I suppose we should be able to forgive Chaplin for not being so subtle in "A King in New York!"
Related DVD's A King in New York / A Woman of Paris (2 Disc Special Edition)
This blistering little black comedy was well ahead of its time when released in 1947. Originally, Orson Welles had wanted Chaplin to star in his drama about a French mass murderer named Landru, but Chaplin was hesitant to act for another director, and used the idea himself. He plays a dapper gent named Henri Verdoux (who assumes a number of identities), a civilized monster who marries wealthy women, then murders them (as we meet him, he's gathering roses as an incinerator ominously bellows smoke in the background) and collects their money to support his real family. The Little Tramp is now a distant memory, though this was the first film not to feature Chaplin's beloved creation. Verdoux is largely viciously clever until it gets too heavy-handed, as evidenced when a woman he spares... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charles Chaplin Director(s): Charles Chaplin DVD Release Date: Released the 02 March 2004 Usually ships within 24 hours
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Certainly, Charlie Chaplin at this point in his career (1952) had earned the right to reflect on his years as an entertainer, and could make his film as overlong and soppy and sentimental as he darn well pleased. But that doesn't mean the rest of us have to abet this kind of melodramatic indulgence. Chaplin stars as Calvero, a fading clown who helps a paralyzed dancer regain the use of her legs and achieve great fame, but of course at grave cost to Calvero. The film is famous for featuring the only onscreen teaming of Chaplin with the other legendary comic of the silent era, Buster Keaton, and is equally infamous for Chaplin having allegedly cut out most of Keaton's best bits in their sequence together. How much Chaplin sabotaged his own movie to keep Keaton from shining has been much... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charles Chaplin - Claire Bloom Director(s): Charles Chaplin DVD Release Date: Released the 01 July 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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City Lights is a film to pick for the time capsule, a film that best represents the many aspects of director-writer-star Charlie Chaplin at the peak of his powers: Chaplin the actor, the sentimentalist, the knockabout clown, the ballet dancer, the athlete, the lover, the tragedian, the fool. It's all contained in Chaplin's simple story of a tramp who falls in love with a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill). Chaplin elevates the Victorian contrivances of the plot to something glorious with his inventive use of pantomime and his sure grasp of how the Tramp relates to the audience. In 1931, it was a gamble for Chaplin to stick with silence after talking pictures had killed off the art form that had made him famous, but audiences flocked to City Lights anyway. (Chaplin would... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charles Chaplin - Virginia Cherrill Director(s): Charles Chaplin DVD Release Date: Released the 02 March 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Since Adolf Hitler had the audacity to borrow his mustache from the most famous celebrity in the world--Charlie Chaplin--it meant Hitler was fair game for Chaplin's comedy. (Strangely, the two men were born within four days of each other.) The Great Dictator, conceived in the late thirties but not released until 1940, when Hitler's war was raging across Europe, is the film that skewered the tyrant. Chaplin plays both Adenoid Hynkel, the power-mad ruler of Tomania, and a humble Jewish barber suffering under the dictator's rule. Paulette Goddard, Chaplin's wife at the time, plays the barber's beloved; and the rotund comedian Jack Oakie turns in a weirdly accurate burlesque of Mussolini, as a bellowing fellow dictator named Benzino Napaloni, Dictator of Bacteria. Chaplin himself hits... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charles Chaplin - Paulette Goddard Director(s): Charles Chaplin DVD Release Date: Released the 01 July 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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