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...
Source: Contemporary Literary Criticism, ©1981 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
(The entire page is 855 words.)
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