Chaplin, (Sir) Charles (Spencer) - Stanley Kauffmann
STANLEY KAUFFMANN
[A King in New York] is produced in typical Chaplin style—tackily. The lighting, photography, settings and editing are banal and cheap. The music is music-hall. The concern for accuracy is so small that, in what is supposed to be New York, the doors to a theater orchestra are labeled "Stalls," an elevator is labeled "Lift," and in a street scene we see the office of a famous London bookmaker. The direction is, as always, Chaplin-centered and theater-oriented. Most of the actors seem hardly to have been directed at all, and the predominant motions of the film are of actors' entrances and exits, rather than any intrinsic cinematic mode. (p. 247)
The script, by Chaplin, seems a series of ad hoc inventions with only the vaguest general plan. Whenever the phone rings or the door-buzzer sounds in Shadhov's hotel suite, which is the story's "basic" set you know that the sagging plot is going to get another boost…. The script has …...
[The entire page is 855 words long]
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