Carol Reed advised that one should avoid shooting master shots with kids and adults together. The adults get thrown off by their anxiety that the kids will forget their lines. “In fact,” he added, “children never forget their lines. But they do forget their cues.”
In order to remember their cues, kids memorize entire scenes, not just their own lines and cues, and so you can see little Emma Watson’s lips moving as the other characters speak in the final train station scene of HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE. She’s psychically looping the late Robbie Coltraine’s dialogue.
And so too with little Michael Chaplin in A KING IN NEW YORK — I missed this, but once you see it you can’t unsee it. Actor Steven McNicoll, a fan of the film, tested me this valuable information. He queries why Chaplin, rarely reluctant to cut to himself, didn’t go to a single whenever his son started lip-synching. I assume either he didn’t notice or didn’t think anyone else would.
It makes a joke out of Chaplin’s advice to older son Sydney to not just stand around waiting for his line, but to pay close attention to the other players. Practice what you preach, Charlie!
Stevie added a suggestion that I check out Remembering Charlie by Jerry Epstein, Chaplin’s producer. It’s a treasure trove. And now I understand Bertrand Tavernier’s enthusiasm for my budget top sheet, which included Epstein’s name — he immediately clocked him as having been involved in some of Eddie Constantine’s French comedy-thrillers.
The book gives us the memorable image of Constantine singing Ol’ Man River to an appreciative Chaplin.
Epstein directed this Constantine movie, without credit, and apparently used some gags suggested by Chaplin. Now I want to see it to find out if they’re recognizably Chaplinesque.
We also learn that the character of Ann Kay was written for Kay Kendall, who was dating young Sydney for a time, but then Chaplin saw GENEVIEVE and didn’t care for it, and also realised he needed an American girl. Kay Kendall would have gotten laughs, which the film needs, but he was right — the only thing maintaining a sense that we’re in New York is the intermittent American and pseudo-American accents.
And it turns out that the very funny/grotesque plastic surgery sequence in KING was inspired by Epstein’s attempted nose-job. Constantine, convinced that Epstein would make a great co-star if only he’d have his schnozz fixed, had persuaded the non-actor to sign up for racial reassignment rhinoplasty, but he’d thankfully chickened out at the last moment. Chaplin saw the comic potential and ran with it.
The book informs us that Sam Wanamaker was originally cast in the Sid James part, but Chaplin felt he wasn’t aggressive enough and replaced him. But nobody told Sam, who turned up to the premiere with his family… He’d been very excited to work with CC, especially in a film denouncing the blacklist. Still, he DID get to work with CC, nobody can take that away from him.
Epstein gives us valuable insights into Chaplin’s writing process, though he tends to praise the film for things that arguably don’t deserve praise. Chaplin began with a few scenes, added more disconnected bits, searched for a unifying theme, and then finally hit on the idea of bringing back Michael’s blacklist orphan (Rosenberg son?), who runs away from the orphanage into some freezing back projection before turning up, rather inexplicably, at King Shadhov’s hotel.
The trouble with this idea is that it can’t unify all Chaplin’s ideas — Michael doesn’t even appear until halfway, then disappears for a great stretch with no clue he’s to return. The disparate scenes remain fragmented, the movie’s momentum collapsing in a series of fits, starts, and non-starters. Chaplin could write MODERN TIMES as a bag of bits, since the unifying theme was inherently present in the background of every instant of the movie — How do you survive in the modern world? THE GREAT DICTATOR and MONSIEUR VERDOUX both have serious dramatic business boiling away at all times, in which the protagonists are inextricably tangled. LIMELIGHT is less assured, because it chooses multiple problems in place of one good big one — Suicide! Hysterical Paaralyssi! Alcoholism! Creative Crisis! May-September Romance! A Woman in Love with Two Men!
Epstein wonders why people insist on seeing KING as anti-American. Nobody seems to have consciously intended this. But the movie attained this tract status by increments, so nobody noticed. Chaplin has some fun poking at American culture, innocently enough. Then he grafts on the blacklist. Now all the light satire comes to seem heavier, part of an overall attack. Still, the film is to be praised for directly attacking HUAC when everyone else was afraid to, and if it IS a critique of America it comes from a warm place — Chaplin wants America to live up to its best ideals, which is surely the opposite of being anti-American or indeed unamerican.
As in A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG, a character is dressed in the lead character’s outsized pajamas, turning them briefly into a Little Tramp figure (in COUNTESS it’s Loren in Brando’s yellow jimjams).
One successful aspect of Chaplin weaving his son through the storyline is he serves as punchline of sorts to King Shadhov’s attempt to pitch his unspecified atomic power plan to the Atomic Energy Commission — they turn up when Shadhov is out, get an earful of Michael’s communistic political speech, and run fleeing into the process shots of streets.
This leads — eventually — to Shadhov being subpoenaed, so now we’re into the film’s final stretch —
TO BE CONCLUDED
shadowplay 