King in New York

Charlie Chaplin's penultimate film--featuring his final starring performance--was made in 1957 but wasn't officially released in America until the '70s, when it, surprisingly enough, won an Oscar for Chaplin's score. What took so long? Thanks to his politics and unorthodox personal life, Chaplin was pretty roundly hated by the late '50s, but had the movie been better, someone might've brought it stateside sooner. Chaplin plays King Shahdov of Estrovia, on the lam when revolution grips his homeland. In New York, despite the occasional indignity, he's treated as royalty until he takes a stand against the commie-hunters, a plotline that hit way too close to home at the time (Chaplin, remember, was ahead of everyone in attacking Hitler when he made The Great Dictator). There's one inspired bit, as Shahdov orders dinner over the din of a supper club, but overall, the satire is strident, and Chaplin's takes on such things as technology and pop music make him look decidedly like an old fogy. --David Kronke

The eternal clown, Charlie Chaplin believed that the best solution to any problem was to poke fun at it. Thus, as fascism was the target of "The Great Dictator," the ills he saw in 1950s society were the targets at which he shot his satirical arrows in "A King in New York" (1957, 109 min.). The story is about an overthrown monarch who arrives in New York to find that his prime minister has absconded with all his funds. Running up massive bills in his hotel, he is persuaded to make television commercials. Meanwhile, the monarch meets a precocious lad who is being harassed by government agents to betray his parents. Frustrated by a society that pays enormous sums of money to buffoons and hucksters while undermining its own constitution is eventually too much for the monarch, and he leaves the country, but not before he passes on to the young boy the hope for a better future. Also included on this DVD is the legendary silent movie of manners, mores and morals, "A Woman of Paris" (1923, 91 min.), the first Charlie Chaplin film in which he did not appear.