A King in New York

A King in New York (1957) is Charlie Chaplin's sharp satirical comedy you can watch online on iFILM. King Shahdov flees a revolution in his tiny kingdom and lands in America expecting freedom. What he finds instead is television, advertising contracts, and a House Un-American Activities Committee that sees a Red behind every foreign accent.

Chaplin wrote, directed, and starred in the film himself — his last major screen performance. Shot entirely in London because he had been barred from re-entering the United States, it turned exile into material. The deposed king stumbles into TV celebrity while befriending a boy whose communist parents have been hauled before HUAC. The child ends up being the moral centre of the whole thing, and Chaplin plays the scenes with him without a single easy laugh.

Released in Britain in 1957, the film didn't reach American audiences until 1973. That delay is itself part of the story: the most pointed Hollywood satire of the McCarthy era was made by a man Hollywood had discarded. Stream A King in New York (1957) online on iFILM.