World Famous Comics: A King in New York / A Woman of Paris (2 Disc Special Edition)
A King in New York / A Woman of Paris (2 Disc Special Edition)
Starring: Dawn Addams, Robert Arden, Maxine Audley, Phil Brown, Clifford Buckton Directed By: Charles Chaplin Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Audience Rating: G (General Audience) Binding: DVD Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC Label: Warner Home Video Number of Items: 2 Region Code: 1 Release Date: March 02, 2004 Running Time: 178 minutes Theatrical Release Date: December 21, 1973
Product Description: Chaplin working as usual on both sides of the camera was in self-imposed exile from the United States when he launched this pie in the face at targets that include overhyped movies overamped music celebrity facelifts ad pitchmen and political witchhunts. Chaplin plays a deposed European monarch who comes to Manhattan and is soon made a media sensation by advertisers eager to cash in on his name. Charlie's son Michael Chaplin plays the firebrand youth who helps the king rediscover his ideals. The comedy sequences are imaginative and many. The satire is topical yet timeless. Today as yesterday Chaplin rules.Running Time: 362 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 085393765323
Amazon.com: 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
The Shadow King All these reviews and no one mentioning the exceptional child actor who plays Rupert Macabee. I remember Michael Chaplin growing up and rebelling against his old man, writing his memoirs--"I Couldn't Smoke the Grass on My Father's Lawn." Then dying far too young, and perhaps the poignance of that early death colors my response to his performance here as the left-wing little boy who gets tamed by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
The boys school scene, the juvenile delinquents popping up from behind bazaar stalls to pop spitballs at Shadhov and his ambassador--sort of puerile and not very amusing, but as soon as Shadhov meets little Rupert (at age 10, editor of the school newspaper, and unable to stop mouthing the left rhetoric he learned from his parents), the picture takes on a greater depth of feeling. Previous to this it has been a fitfully amusing satire of US foibles in midcentury--rock music, body odor, commercialization of the intimate, but when Rupert starts hollering his impassioned pleas for social revolution, something seems seriously wrong and the King realizes that American has become a schizophrenic culture. Later on, the boy is found outside the Ritz and the King takes him to his suite, drawing him a hot bath (there is an inspired pantomime scene involving stripping Rupert of his clothes, while Shadhov moves from spot to spot so the audience never sees anything of the boys' body), and he seems to soften a little.
If there is a weakness to the film, it is that Dawn Addams, as the television presenter Ann Kay, is not drawn into the HUAC story with sufficient skill. Thus charming as she is, she remains outside the disturbing political content of the action, and also outside of its real feeling. Maxine Audley, as the Queen, fares better--though she isn't as glamorous, and her faded prettiness pales next to Dawn Addams' go-go Dawn Powell-ness.
A Woman of Paris: My New Favorite Chaplin Film I was impressed by the realistic depiction of the characters, subtle acting and imaginative camera work. I didn't miss the sight gags since the story is so involving. I don't think you can have a proper appreciation for Chaplin's genius without seeing A Woman of Paris. It is certainly not a minor footnote, but one of the signal films of his career. Chaplin cannot resist his melodramatic instincts, and the plot veers off course toward the end, but for the first 3/4 of the film Chaplin manages to make twenties Paris come alive. These figures from another era nevertheless have the solemn ring of truth, as Chaplin paints with a finer brush than he ever had in his career. It is sad that A Woman of Paris has been relegated to a footnote in Chaplin's career, and to a pairing with the totally dissimilar and in many ways inferior, A King in New York. It is a wise, wonderful movie about the tricks of fate life can play in our lives, and about the particularly crushing effect life can have on women, who often are judged more harshly by society for making unconventional choices. This movie is highly recommended. Five well earned stars.
Not your "typical" Chaplin movies Both of these films, 1923's "A Woman of Paris", and 1957's "A King in New York" are probably not what you'd expect in a Chaplin film based on the totality of his body of work both in features and in shorts. However, that doesn't mean they're not worthwhile viewing. It just means if you are new to Chaplin, you might not want to start here.
"A Woman of Paris" showed Chaplin's talent behind the camera without him appearing in front of it, except for a lone cameo in which he quickly appears and then disappears acting as a luggage boy. He made it for two reasons, to do some pioneering in cinematic technique and to help give his long time costar and companion Edna Purviance a career boost. The film is actually quite good with great performances by Purviance and by Adolphe Menjou as a carefree playboy. The film did make a star out of Menjou. It didn't really help Purviance that much. The film is about a pair of star-crossed lovers that circumstance drives apart and then brings back together and the eventual tragedy that occurs due to the weakness of will of Purviance's one time fiance, played by Carl Miller. The film was a failure at the box office, not because it was bad, but because audiences expected to see Chaplin when they went to a Chaplin film. The commentary on the film mentions the fact that after the failure of this film Chaplin went back to formulas that were tried and true for him and never really went out on a limb experimenting again, which is too bad for all of us.
1957's "A King in New York" shows Chaplin at the end of his film career. Refused permission to reenter the U.S. in 1952 due to the idea that he held anti-American beliefs, he actually made this film about a deposed European king in New York in England. The film suffers from production values that are not as high as they were in Chaplin's earlier films, and the commentary points out that Chaplin had much trouble making this film mainly because he was not dealing with familiar personnel in his own studio as he had in his earlier efforts. The film's political statements are heavy-handed, but there are still some good comic turns by Chaplin and his viewpoints and comic bits on America and rampant commercialism and consumerism still hold up today. In fact, they are probably much more relevant today than they were 50 years ago.
If you are curious about Chaplin's work you need to eventually view both of these films, just don't start your journey here. If you are just starting out, I recommend you view Image Entertainment's Mutual Comedies. These are 12 two-reel comedies Chaplin made in 1916 and 1917 and show his comic technique evolve from the pants-kicking fests of his Essanay and Keystone films into the sophisticated technique he had from the end of the series onward. Also, the Mutual period was named by Chaplin himself as the era in both his personal and professional life in which he was the happiest.
A VISIONARY VIEW OF AMERICA 1957. Written and directed by Charles Chaplin. Brilliant satire of the U.S.A. of the fifties. Chaplin squares up with the McCarthy paranoia, the television era and with a country that refused to renew his residence permit in 1952.
It took a British Jew to express that much compassion Charles Chaplin is setting up his own troubles with the anti-American activities commission on the screen, and that is quite funny though particularly dramatic. That episode of US history is so strange but also tragic that it should be remembered forever for the mistake not to be ever renewed in the future, though with no guarantee that it will be so. Unluckily in this kind of business there seems to be always a repeat and another repeat and a third repeat, without any ending. Charles Chaplin turns his own mishap into a comedy, with some very traditional but always lively and kind of born again gags and tricks. But he does succeed to turn a dramatic situation into a laughable short episode, though it means a child of ten is turned into a fink who exposes other people to protect his own interest, with no guarantee of any truth in what he may say, since he is a child, and with the certainty that he will be spoiled forever by the episode. This film, no matter how well-felt it may have been, will remain a testimony of that McCarthy period, mocked in his very victims that become Macaby. But we will regret that such a great artist was obliged to come to making this film to bring an end, or at least help to bring an end, to this sorry episode. We would have liked him to have reached his acme in political films with the Dictator and never gone beyond, but unluckily life made him write and shoot another episode which is just as sorry, even if not as bloody, as the previous one.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
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