Chaplin Today: A King in New York

I was always flabbergasted by the ongoing negative reception of A KING IN NEW YORK. It might not be Chaplin's best, but the satire of American culture is so on point (tell me his digs at the omnipresence of advertising are still not applicable to our ad-saturated landscape!) and Michael Chaplin is such an engaging kid character-- I have to confess it is my second favorite of Chaplin's talkies.

This video featurette is a fine appreciation of the movie starring director Jim Jarmusch and Michael Chaplin. Their comments on the film make me appreciate it all the more.

I love that Jim Jarmusch is involved in this brief documentary. I never read thought of Jarmusch as being connected to Chaplin, but now I know that the film was an inspiration for "Lost in Translation". That makes me want to watch it again.

The modern footage of New York is cheaply done, and I wish they had just used stock footage... who wants to see a guy in a car shake his camera all over the place?

The centerpiece is an interview with Michael Chaplin (who apparently speaks French). He was the power behind the film, and certainly knew Charlie Chaplin in a way that no one else could. For someone like me, who knows very little about Chaplin's personal life, this was a special treat, looking inside the man himself.

When 'A King in New York' was criticised as political propaganda, Chaplin declared "I have no political convictions" - so blatantly untrue that we wonder why he bothered saying it. But Chaplin simply viewed the world from above the clouds, as you can tell from his idiotic sermon at the end of The Great Dictator.

'A King in New York' would be his last starring vehicle, and he used it to attack the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which had forced him into exile. So he acts as an exiled king, while his sermonising in this case is left to a ten-year old boy genius, played by his son Michael Chaplin, who did not understand the lines he was speaking, but still delivered them in a wholehearted way like a good pro.

The adult Michael appears in the later part of this film, claiming that he had enjoyed a good relationship with his father (conveniently ignoring a book he published as a druggie teenager, full of spite and loathing for the old man). Also commenting is film-director Jim Jarmusch, whose hippie style jarred on me, especially when he said that Chaplin (via his mouthpiece Michael) "stood for all the beautiful things". When someone asked Chaplin whether he might follow The Great Dictator with a spoof on Stalin, he said "It is hard to play a man who has no faults." Enough said, I think.