A King in New York / A Woman of Paris (2 Disc Special Edition)

Starring:Dawn Addams, Robert Arden, Maxine Audley, Phil Brown, Clifford Buckton, Robert Cawdron, Charles Chaplin, Michael Chaplin, Jerry Desmonde, Alan Gifford, Harry Green, Joan Ingram, Sid James, Oliver Johnston, Lauri Lupino Lane, Vincent Lawson, John McLaren, Joy Nichols, Shani Wallis, George Woodbridge
Director: Charles Chaplin
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
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
Description
Cinema immortal Charles Chaplin brings his talents to both sides of the camera in this deluxe double feature. The comedy king gives American pop culture and politics the royal treatment in the satiric, penultimate Chaplin film A King in New York. Advertising, movies, TV, rock music, celebrity and more are in Chaplin's comic sights as he portrays a deposed European monarch who becomes a U.S. media sensation. The acclaimed Silent-Era classic A Woman of Paris is Chaplin's first drama (a genre he visited again in Limelight). Directing with keen-eyed finesse and appearing in only a bit role, Chaplin jabs at French high society while telling a tale of tragic love. The early Chaplin. The later Chaplin. A remarkable genius infuses both in this special collector's compilation.

The Chaplin Collection, Vol. 2 (City Lights / The Circus / The Kid / A King in New York / A Woman of Paris / Monsieur Verdoux / The Chaplin Revue / Charlie - The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin)
Average customer rating:

Don't expect the box to last...

Superb and very entertaining

The true comedy collection

Films to Enjoy

Very good, with few complaints

The Chaplin Collection, Vol. 2 (City Lights / The Circus / The Kid / A King in New York / A Woman of Paris / Monsieur Verdoux / The Chaplin Revue / Charlie - The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin)
Starring: Charles Chaplin , and Charlie Chaplin
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00017LVRI
Release Date: 2004-03-09

Amazon.com

The second magnificent collection of Charlie Chaplin's work is even more stuffed with goodies than the first: six feature films, a round-up of two-reelers, and a new documentary, plus a cornucopia of deleted scenes and context. Each feature is accompanied by a half-hour "Chaplin Today" featurette, in which a filmmaker comments from a 21st-century perspective. Claude Chabrol extols the wicked virtues of Monsieur Verdoux and calls Chaplin "a thoroughly modern director," while Jim Jarmusch speaks gallantly on the political satire of the problematic A King in New York.

The Kid (1921), Chaplin's first feature, relates directly to Chaplin's own hard upbringing. The Tramp adopts a street kid (Jackie Coogan), in a seamless blend of slapstick and sentiment. For A Woman of Paris (1923), Chaplin experimented: straight, adult melodrama, with no Charlie onscreen (save for a brief cameo). 1927's The Circus is prized by many Chaplin critics as pure sublime comedy, less burdened by sentiment or politics than subsequent films. City Lights (1931) is an undisputed masterpiece; the Tramp befriends a blind girl, leading to one of the great bittersweet endings in film history. (Among the extras: a priceless seven-minute deleted scene involving little more than Chaplin and a piece of wood stuck in a grate.) With Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Chaplin turned his back on the Tramp and invented an elegant lady killer (literally); audiences disapproved, but the film stands as a fascinating essay on himself. Finally, after his exile from the United States, Chaplin made A King in New York (1957), which is mostly flat, except as autobiography.

The Chaplin Revue gathers six essential short works, from the superb A Dog's Life (1918) to his last two-reeler, The Pilgrim. A separate disc contains film critic Richard Schickel's comprehensive documentary Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin, which does nicely by Chaplin's life and his working process, with keen comments from admirers such as Woody Allen and Johnny Depp. This box set is more than film history; it's a living treasure. --Robert Horton

Description

The wonder. The magic. The genius. Now for an encore presentation with stunning new restorations, all-new special features and more. The Richard Schickel documentary, "Charlie" available exclusively in this Chaplin Giftset. THE CIRCUS The Little Tramp accidentally becomes a big-top star in the comedy that earned Chaplin a special Academy Award?. CITY LIGHTS A forever classic - and an American Film Institute Top-100 Movie. The Tramp becomes a working man, saving money for an operation that will restore a blind flower girl's sight. THE KID The Tramp and his ragamuffin sidekick (6-year-old Jackie Coogan) triumph over life's hard knocks in the landmark film that changed the notion of what a screen comedy could be. A KING IN NEW YORK/A WOMAN OF PARIS Chaplin jabs at social conventions! U.S. pop culture is the target of his satiric A King in New York. And the whirl of French high society frames director Chaplin's tragic love story A Woman of Paris.

MONSIEUR VERDOUX Killer comedy! Chaplin turns his sunny nature inside out to play a roving gent who wins the love and bank accounts of spinsters, then murders the hapless biddies.

Customer Reviews:

Don't expect the box to last..........2007-04-03

When my copy of this set arrived, I found that the set's box (with Chaplin on the cover) was just a little too big for the set itself - maybe an eighth of an inch extra space, so when the whole package got tightly shrinkwrapped, the excess space and the tip of one corner were crushed to fit around the DVDs. Not a huge deal, but it means that the box, already somewhat flimsy for the number of DVDs it houses, lost some of its structual integrity, and now doesn't support itself so well; once you take a couple of the DVDs out, it quickly loses its right angles -- the ramshackle rhombus effect. So I sent it back, and the replacement has just arrived...with the exact same problem. Of course, while Amazon makes it ever so easy to "Leave Seller Feedback" for any of its thousands of Amazon Marketplace affiliates, there is one seller for which they do not allow this option: Amazon itself. Anyway, I'm sure it's a great set, and the defect in question is minor, but it's always a little disappointing when you look forward to a new purchase, then find that it is just a tiny bit damaged before you even unwrap it. I have had this experience twice now, and I guess I'll just give up, and try not to look at what could have been a fairly handsome box. But when you get yours, set the box on a table with the DVD spines lined up in front of you, and have a look at the lower right-hand corner of the box. Hopefully, you *won't* see what I mean. But if you do, you'll find that this box would have been just perfect if the set had included one more, thin DVD.

Superb and very entertaining.......2007-01-19

Excellent variety of Chaplin movies that are worth many viewings and well-worth the price of the collection. Good quality DVD's of very old films. Monsieur Verdoux, a rare Chaplin "talkie", is dated in plot structure and appeal and includes several scenes of stilted acting (Chaplin is actually a better actor than the others in the cast). Although not of the caliber of the silent films, it makes an interesting addition to the masterpieces, if you are studying Chaplin's works and it is fascinating to hear Chaplin's voice. His physical comedy is artful, masterful, highly acrobatic, perfectly timed, surprising, and hilarious; it has not been surpassed in 80-plus years.

The true comedy collection.......2006-12-15

This wonderful boxed set completes the chaplin collection, this in my view is the better chaplin collection it includes such classics as city lights, modern times, the great dictator, and many more classics.my advice to the other chaplin fans is go out and buy the chaplin collection 1&2 before there all sold out.

Films to Enjoy.......2006-08-15

The fine Humor and art creativity found in this treasure films are incomparable. It's worth the price.

Very good, with few complaints.......2006-08-05

Once again, as with Volume 1, the main pieces of this box are first class, simply great quality reissues of Chaplins greatest (and less great) films. It's the other pieces that leave cause me to scratch my head.

So, let's start with what is good.

We have here some of Chaplin's finest silent work, including my favorite, The Circus. The films are expertly restored and projected at a speed which is about as close to the subjective "correct speed" as possible. The soundtracks are well restored, and there are plenty of cut scenes, outtakes and home movies to go along with the original films.

A couple of films are notoriously weak, and one just has to look at the box to figure out which ones those are. "Monsieur Verdoux" has only one disc, and "A Woman of Paris" and "A King in New York" actually share a 2 disc set. But these films are essential to completing Chaplin's legacy, and it is good to have them well issued and in as nice a presentation as possible.

There is a 5.1 surround soundtrack, which is really wierd, since these were issued in mono to start with. Why not just colorize the films while you're at it, M2K? (I know, some people just can't watch a film with a mono soundtrack, but this is really excessive.)

The we have the documentary by Richard Schickel, which, which good, is very frustrating. It's great to see brief clips of the Keystone films in excellent quality, but isn't it time to release the ENTIRE collection of Keystones in best-possible quality? WHEN, OH WHEN, WILL THIS HAPPEN!

Some argument could also be made that the short films in this collection could have been better considered. There are several different versions of some of these films, "Shoulder Arms" comes to mind, and it is quite possible that the version sused here are the best pictorial quality, but not the best acting quality. This is a very subjective topic, but I would have liked to see the original "Shoulder Arms" included as well, perhaps the most substantially different of the versions. This is a minor complaint, though.

The "Chaplin Today" documentaries, as in the first box set, are rather pathetic, and self-defeating in their attempts to make Chaplin relevent to today's audiences. If Chaplin wasn't relevent, then nobody would by this box set, and I wouldn't bother writing this review. But he is relevent. Trying to convice people so doesn't work, unfortunately, so we end up with these rather pathetic documentary attempts.

But overall, this is a collection of gems, and complaining about the ancillary pieces of this collection is like complaining about the floor in the room containing the Hope Diamond. It's only the actual films that matter, and they are superb.

A King in New York / A Woman of Paris (2 Disc Special Edition)

Average customer rating:

It took a British Jew to express that much compassion
CHAPLIN'S FIRST SERIOUS SILENT DRAMA AND FINAL COMIC POLITICAL JAB AT THE USA
One overrated and one underrated
Chaplin's Idiosyncrasies Captured in Two Wildly Diverse Semi-Classics
A Chaplin Comedy-Drama

A King in New York / A Woman of Paris (2 Disc Special Edition)
Starring: Dawn Addams , Robert Arden , Maxine Audley , Phil Brown , and Clifford Buckton
Director: Charles Chaplin
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00017LVQE
Release Date: 2004-03-02

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

Description

Cinema immortal Charles Chaplin brings his talents to both sides of the camera in this deluxe double feature. The comedy king gives American pop culture and politics the royal treatment in the satiric, penultimate Chaplin film A King in New York. Advertising, movies, TV, rock music, celebrity and more are in Chaplin's comic sights as he portrays a deposed European monarch who becomes a U.S. media sensation. The acclaimed Silent-Era classic A Woman of Paris is Chaplin's first drama (a genre he visited again in Limelight). Directing with keen-eyed finesse and appearing in only a bit role, Chaplin jabs at French high society while telling a tale of tragic love. The early Chaplin. The later Chaplin. A remarkable genius infuses both in this special collector's compilation.

Customer Reviews:

It took a British Jew to express that much compassion.......2007-06-14

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

CHAPLIN'S FIRST SERIOUS SILENT DRAMA AND FINAL COMIC POLITICAL JAB AT THE USA.......2006-08-20

In the Woman of Paris, Chaplin wrote and directed a very early silent full length feature film seriously examining the loose life style he discovered in Hollywood, not so much in Paris. He dared not place it in the America of the time, and so relied on American prejudices about Paris to place his tale of love and deceit there. He cleverly presented themes in a way which might pass the censors of the time, including gently alluded nudity, etc. And he got excellent performances from his actors, including Mr. Menjou, who subtly at the end expresses that he too deeply regrets having lost the Woman of Paris. A profound and interesting morality play, which reveals Chaplin's intellectual and creative side beyond the vaudeville escapades which made him rich and famous before being exiled at the behest of the powerful studios which could not control him.

In fact The King in New York directly examines the irony of his being accused of communism in America while actually practicing an overly successful capitalism which threatened the politically powerful studio system. It is like cutting back Tom Cruise's price tag by accusing him of scientology, but then it cancelled Chaplin's career and forced him to flee to Europe, at which point the US government refused his re-entrance.

This excellent double disk DVD explores carefully these and other issues, and is highly recommended.For further study of the political persecution explored in the King in New York, take a look at the Front with Woody Allen and Zero Mostel, The Cradle will Rock about Orson Welles, and of course Goodnight and Good Luck with George Clooney.

The King In New York also features a unique performance by Chaplin's own son as a radicalized young man spouting left wing opinions as virulently and mindlessly as the powerful right wing forces, although of course, far less effectively. Certainly Chaplin makes a point here about political rhetoric, a point rendered poignant by the boy's later utter defeat and humiliated regret at his betraying his parent's friends.

But this is essentially a comedy, with some sense of the Marx Brother's Fredonia and much of Chaplin's mugging and surprising agility even in old age. The commentary and extras are mainly a valuable addition rather than a distraction or embarrassment as in many other cases.

Above all do not miss a dedicated viewing of a Woman of Paris. Chaplin, early and intelligent, attempted something similar to a play by Ibsen, examining closely relationships of a wide variety: Fathers and Sons, Mothers and Sons, unsanctioned love, ideal love, commercialized love, commited and caring relations, commited but uncaring relations, etc. Read this movie as you would a serious romance novel of the period, as you might read Flaubert, or Joyce's Dubliners. Chaplin was reaching for a mirror of life that we might reflect, and learn from for our own lives. Chaplin here was ready to outgrow the popular Little Tramp comedies and write his best work. He included an apologetic message to his audience, which nevertheless wanted only broad entertainment and not high-brow reflections upon life and its meaning.

Now perhaps we are ready for such fare. Liv Ullman provides interesting insight into how to view this film when she suggests we see it as a modern movie done with different technology. Modern movies should yet approach this degree of subtlety and sophistication, of insight and of philosophy. We might even say it is an early feminist film; it is certainly humanist.

One overrated and one underrated.......2006-03-04

This two-disc collection contains Chaplin's penultimate film, 'A King in New York,' which was also his final starring film, and a much earlier film he directed but only appears in for all of two seconds in a heavily disguised cameo role, 'A Woman of Paris.' I find the former to be very underrated, and the latter to be rather overrated.

For the life of me, I can't understand why so many film critics love 'A Woman of Paris' and praise it as a beautiful classic masterpiece. Seeing it more than once hasn't changed my opinion of it. It's certainly not a horrible film, but overall it just strikes me as an average melodrama, with characters I didn't really like or feel that connected to. Apart from the fact that it was directed by Chaplin, there isn't much explanation as to why this film is thought of so highly. I've heard the other explanation that many critics like it because it's about an affair yet isn't moralistic or preachy about it. The best thing about this movie is the dapper Adolphe Menjou. This was his breakthrough role; prior his biggest claim to fame was playing Dr. Raoul de St. Hubert in 'The Sheik.' Menjou steals the show in this otherwise ordinary melodrama, and his acting is as great as it was in all of his other films. Even though I'm repelled by his odious behavior during the McCarthyist witch hunts, there's no denying that, politics aside, this was a brilliant actor. This film was also, so Chaplin believed, supposed to have jump-started the solo career of his leading lady Edna Purviance, but it was not to be. However, my reasons for not caring much for this film are not the reasons why most people in 1923 stayed away in droves. Back then they didn't like it because they saw Chaplin's name on the marquee but were disappointed they didn't see him in the film, and it wasn't even a comedy, which people had come to expect from him.

'A King in New York' is a very funny film and a brilliant satire of America in the Fifties. It took a lot of guts to make such a film, when America was in the throes of McCarthyism. Because of the political climate of the time, it wasn't released in America for quite some time, but it was very well-received in Europe. However, I agree that this film isn't quite as perfect as it could have been, since it tries to take on too many targets at once instead of just focusing on one or two main things to attack and spoof. He takes on wide-screen movies, television, commercials, the McCarthyist witch hunts and violations of civil liberties, the atomic bomb, plastic surgery, and rock and roll. Chaplin may have been approaching seventy when he made this film, but he was still just as funny, inventive, original, and genius as ever. Even though a lot of fans don't like his sound films as much as his silent classics, I've found that I enjoy his sound films just as much as his silents. They were great and funny in different ways. There are also moments in this film harkening back to his silent days, such as the comedy routine onstage when he's trying not to laugh so his plastic surgery won't come undone, or when he's pantomiming his restaurant order to the waiter over the din of the band playing right behind his table. The storyline about young Rupert and his Communist parents, and how his affiliation with Rupert got King Shahdov pegged as a Communist as well, really brought the evils of McCarthyism home for me. I'd long known all about what went on and was outraged how the government got away with violating so many peoples' basic civil liberties and rights to freedom of expression and political affiliation for that long, but seeing it acted out onscreen as opposed to merely reading about it really made it seem even scarier and more enfuriating. It really served the HUAC right when King Shahdov accidentally sprayed them with the hose!

For someone just getting into Chaplin, these aren't two of the movies I'd recommending buying or seeing first, but for someone who's seen most of his masterpieces already and is ready for the lesser-known stuff, this would be a good place to start getting into that territory.

Chaplin's Idiosyncrasies Captured in Two Wildly Diverse Semi-Classics.......2006-01-25

Combining two of Charlie Chaplin's more inconspicuous features into one DVD package really attests to the fact that neither 1923's "A Woman of Paris" nor 1957's "A King in New York" rank with his classics, but each provides certain pleasures that only a master filmmaker of Chaplin's status could create. Neither touches upon his Little Tramp character, which actually makes his artistic achievements in each film easier to discern. For Chaplin aficionados, viewing is a must. For others, realize that these two films represent marginally lesser work from this genius when one thinks of masterpieces like "City Lights" and "The Gold Rush".

Released in the UK in 1957 but not in the US until 1972, "A King in New York" is Chaplin's seriocomic indictment of the 1950's McCarthy witch-hunts and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), topics that have come back into the limelight thanks to George Clooney's evocative take on the Murrow-McCarty feud in "Good Night and Good Luck." At that time, Chaplin himself was expelled from the US forbidden to re-enter the country for nearly two decades. The plot focuses on King Shahdov of the fictitious country of Estrovia, an exile who arrives in New York after escaping a revolution occurring in his homeland. In a manner that recalls a bit of Elia Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd" (also released in 1957), a shrewd TV "specialist" makes the King a popular TV celebrity thanks in part to a hidden camera at a dinner party. This portion of the film is pretty amusing, especially when the King does commercials to help gain support for his high-minded plans to harness atomic power.

Unfortunately, the film starts to take a nosedive into polemics soon afterward, as the King strikes up a friendship with a precocious, politically aware ten-year old named Rupert, the son of labeled Communists who refuse to cooperate with the HUAC. There is still some Chaplinesque slapstick in this part of the film, but the contrived sincerity of the dialogue, along with some jokes that fall completely flat, weighs the film down considerably just when you hope it will take off into a more pointed satire. In his last starring role, a nearly 70-year old Chaplin plays the King jauntily, while Dawn Addams has a few sharp moments as the specialist, and Chaplin's son Michael plays Rupert with surprising aplomb. It's not the anti-American diatribe one would expect but rather a whimsical, sometime provocative film that progresses into heavy-handedness.

"A Woman of Paris" is far more of an anomaly in Chaplin's filmography. First, he doesn't star in this early silent film, although he does have an unrecognizable cameo as a porter. Second, it's a melodrama, not a comedy, except for a few passively amusing scenes with a masseuse. Considering that the film is over eighty years old, it looks surprisingly good with a consistently sharp focus and nice black-and-white contrasts thanks to Roland Totheroh's masterly cinematography. There are some tableaux-style shots of a Paris nightclub toward the end that are quite impressive. Chaplin re-scored the film music just before his death in the 1970's, and it provides a nice aural complement to the visuals of the often heavy-handed drama.

The story is centered on a small-town French girl, Marie St. Clair, who plans to elope to Paris with Jean, a struggling artist. Through a misunderstanding, Marie goes to Paris alone, where over the course of a year, she becomes the mistress of Pierre, a wealthy, insouciant playboy Pierre. Through a party location mix-up, Marie accidentally meets Jean in Paris, where they rekindle their love. However, Jean's clinging mother disapproves, and there are melodramatic twists which finally end when Marie finds her true calling. There is not as much exaggeration in facial expressions or physical gestures as one would expect from a silent film, and Chaplin wisely inserts title cards only when they are necessary, not every time a character speaks. At the same time, the plot twists on rather contrived dramatic turns that make the story seem more dated than it is. The long-forgotten Edna Purviance, a longtime Chaplin protégé and leading lady, can hardly convey the frailty of Marie with her Rubenesque stature, but she does manage the mercurial character changes with a certain finesse. Looking strikingly youthful, Adolphe Menjou, who was to become a dependable character actor for the next forty years, is terrifically dapper and surprisingly sympathetic as Pierre.

There are a number of extras with the DVD package that will interest mainly Chaplin aficionados. Some deleted scenes are included for both films but nothing that noteworthy. In half-hour segments, director Jim Jarmusch talks about his admiration of "A King in New York", while actress Liv Ullmann does the same for "A Woman in Paris". In various film clips, Chaplin is seen conducting his orchestra for "A King in New York" and appearing in a very old short based on Alexandre Dumas's "The Lady of the Camellias". There is also some home-movie footage of Paris in the 1920's.

A Chaplin Comedy-Drama.......2004-06-25

I have the honor of owning this film. Chaplin as King Shavow may be serious, but like in all his films, their is a little humor in him. His son Michael's preformace as Rupurt is unforgetable. his speech to the Atomic Commission is closely silmiar to Chaplin's specch in Monsuier Verdoux in 1947. To think it wasn't released until 1975. two years before his death

Average customer rating:

It took a British Jew to express that much compassion
CHAPLIN'S FIRST SERIOUS SILENT DRAMA AND FINAL COMIC POLITICAL JAB AT THE USA
One overrated and one underrated
Chaplin's Idiosyncrasies Captured in Two Wildly Diverse Semi-Classics
A Chaplin Comedy-Drama

A King In New York/ A Woman Of Paris
Starring: Nellie Bly Baker , Henry Bergman , Stella De Lanti , Charles K. French , and Clarence Geldart
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $7.49 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( K ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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ASIN: B00004S89J
Release Date: 2000-04-11

Amazon.com

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 fogy. --David Kronke

Description

The eternal clown, Charlie Chaplin believed that the best solution to any problem was to poke fun at it. Thus, as fascism was the target of "The Great Dictator," the ills he saw in 1950s society were the targets at which he shot his satirical arrows in "A King in New York" (1957, 109 min.). The story is about an overthrown monarch who arrives in New York to find that his prime minister has absconded with all his funds. Running up massive bills in his hotel, he is persuaded to make television commercials. Meanwhile, the monarch meets a precocious lad who is being harassed by government agents to betray his parents. Frustrated by a society that pays enormous sums of money to buffoons and hucksters while undermining its own constitution is eventually too much for the monarch, and he leaves the country, but not before he passes on to the young boy the hope for a better future. Also included on this DVD is the legendary silent movie of manners, mores and morals, "A Woman of Paris" (1923, 91 min.), the first Charlie Chaplin film in which he did not appear.

Customer Reviews:

It took a British Jew to express that much compassion.......2007-06-14

CHAPLIN'S FIRST SERIOUS SILENT DRAMA AND FINAL COMIC POLITICAL JAB AT THE USA.......2006-08-20

One overrated and one underrated.......2006-03-04

Chaplin's Idiosyncrasies Captured in Two Wildly Diverse Semi-Classics.......2006-01-25

A Chaplin Comedy-Drama.......2004-06-25

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