A King in New York (1957)

Wonderful character development!

People are voting emotionally.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors. It is hard to not expect a lot with all his feature films between 'The Kid' and 'Limelight' being very good to masterpieces. On that front Chaplin's penultimate film 'A King in New York' disappoints a little. As far as his feature films go it is one of his weaker ones, being nowhere near the standard of 'The Gold Rush', 'The Kid', 'Modern Times', 'The Great Dictator' and especially 'City Lights'. As far as his overall career goes it is nowhere near among his worst, including his early career short films it is much better than the worst of his Keystone period and even his much improved Essanay period had a couple of lacklustre ones. He also did a couple of historical curios and patchworks that this is also superior to. 'A King in New York' has its problems. It is one of his least visually refined feature films. Some of the camera work and editing are rough and the evoking of New York is not very convincing at all, it was made in England rather than being authentic and it is very obvious it was not shot in New York. Chaplin also lays it on far too thick with the political elements which, while admirably cutting and personal, felt very heavy-handed and not always needed. Especially what is said from the young boy. Chaplin is no stranger to including politics in his films and short films and they are not subtle, but it comes over as very bitter and aggressive here in a way that wasn't there previously. A few parts go on too long too and could have been trimmedHowever, the music is good, neither intrusive or out of place. Chaplin does give a typically great performance and the supporting cast acquit themselves well too. Chaplin is not at his most inspired in the directing but the expertise is still there and handled well.The film is never dull either, while the satirical element is sharp, the comedy is genuinely funny, there is some very thought-provoking insight and there is some sentiment/pathos that is very touching while not being over-the-top or overused.Summing up, good but didn't blow me away. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Mr. Chaplin should have heeded Goldwyn's advice. A telegram is terse and to the point. If the message of this movie is to call attention to the evils of McCarthyism, the message has been diluted by jabs at TV advertising, Cinemascope, teenagers, and by the inclusion of dragged out archaic slapstick, and an implausible romance. Falling fully clothed into a bathtub was old twenty years earlier. The business with the fire hose went on much too long and looked as if it had been lifted from a 1918 Chaplin short.The denouement is witless. If only HUAC could have been wiped away by spraying it with a fire hose. The kid, Rupert, had a stage father instead of a stage mother.

I watched a lot of early Charlie Chaplin films and can only say that like Red Skelton, to me they were neither funny nor what I would classify as great. For me, the ones from that era that were funny were Oliver & Hardy, or later on Abbot & Costello. I loved this film but watched without even knowing it was a Charlie Chaplin movie when I first saw it. As proof that Charlie was correct in his assessment of the American lunacies and a denunciation of McCarthyism is the fact that the movie wasn't released in the US until the 1970s and probably wasn't viewed except by only a few Americans until the 1980s. I think the reason some people don't like it is because they want the Charlie Chaplin of the old silent film era. I would say they are not even the same person. After being hounded out of the United States and being told he would not be allowed to return, how do you expect him to feel? He had to become an almost totally different person after that kind of experience. The penultimate moment of the film for me is when he is labeled as being a Royal Communist. That has to be the most absurdly funny statement I have heard for a long time. His answer in a Latin sounding phrase made it even more humorous. I rate it right up there with Abbot & Costello's "Who is on first, What is on second, I don't know is on third ..." The ensuing actions of what starts it all hinges on those moments. Is it really possible to have a Royal Communist? If you like Oliver & Hardy, Abbot & Costello, or the Marx brothers you will like this movie.

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.