Jan 3, 2010
I don't see any great difference between the first and the second parts of A King in New York. I didn't expect to laugh. We all read the newspapers, and I was well aware of Chaplin's misfortunes in America. I knew what his new film was about and I knew how profoundly sad his preceding films were. We could have known that A King in New York would be the saddest of all, also the most personal. The man who made The Gold Rush can, if he wants to, make his public laugh or cry at will; he knows all the tricks; he's an ace, that's sure. If we neither cry nor laugh at A King in New York, it's because Chaplin made up his mind to touch our heads instead of our hearts. The awful gentleness of this film makes me think of [Resnais's] Nuit et Brouillard, which also rejected the simplemindedness of the propagandist or the hater. (pp. 58-9)
The film doesn't broaden out or force itself on the viewer. There are no scenes...
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