Chaplin, (Sir) Charles (Spencer) - Penelope Houston
PENELOPE HOUSTON
The lapses of genius are always interesting, sometimes baffling, and inevitably sad. The important thing is that they don't, in the long run. greatly matter. Genius means, as often as not, an infinite capacity for taking risks: and with an artist like Chaplin, who has played for high stakes and never been concerned to hedge his bets, there is no possibility of failure in any small way. His new film. A King in New York, is for me as much of a failure as Monsieur Verdoux and Limelight were successes. Those were flawed masterpieces; this seems a failure that occasionally—but only occasionally—touches the edge of brilliance. And it is a film that appears at once important and of little lasting account; immensely revealing and discussable, as any work of Chaplin's must be, and at the same time a picture by which one would no more consider judging its creator than one would judge Shaw by one of his very late plays. This is not to...
[The entire page is 830 words long]
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