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Jawnts: Bizarre delight from Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin's name is still almost universally recognized, but few have seen his movies outside the context of a film class. Not to worry: The Bryn Mawr Film Institute has you covered, at least for one more week.

Charlie Chaplin's name is still almost universally recognized, but few have seen his movies outside the context of a film class. Not to worry: The Bryn Mawr Film Institute has you covered, at least for one more week.

The nonprofit theater hosts themed "film series," where a sequence of four movies is shown over the same number of weeks, with a lecture beforehand and a discussion afterward. The latest series, on Chaplin's "talkies," concludes Tuesday with A King in New York (1957). (It's too late to sign up for the class, but the movie showing is open to the public.)

The movie itself is a bizarre delight and a riff on Chaplin's running battles with the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). During the silent era, his near-scientifically calibrated mixture of pathos and slapstick made his Little Tramp, arguably, the most famous icon in the world. But by the 1950s, his stardom had faded, and conservative moralists circled, smelling weakness in his refusal to denounce American communists.

A King in New York concerns King Igor Shahdov, who flees to the metropolis after being dethroned by revolutionaries. There follows a series of unfortunate adventures involving a lecture-prone youngster and atomic plans of dubious narrative importance, which ends in Shahdov's being accused of being "a royal communist." (A reductio ad absurdum claim, Chaplin notes, in what has got to be the sole cinematic use of the term).

All the bluster about anti-anti-communism gets a little tiresome (even a righteous cause will when hawked by a precocious tot), although it's worth it to see the dullards of HUAC get drenched with a fire hose at film's end. The real highlights are in the first 45 minutes, when Shahdov is overwhelmed by the massed forces of America consumerism: literally ankle-biting bobby-soxers, a dinner party sponsored by a deodorant company, and a reel of mocking false movie trailers that wouldn't seem out of place in the comedy film Tropic Thunder (2008). He eventually capitulates, signs an advertising contract, and gets plastic surgery.

Chaplin made the movie while in European exile. After World War II, scandal dogged the filmmaker, whipped up by right-wing politicians. ("His very life in Hollywood is detrimental to the moral fabric of America," said Democratic Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi.) Rumors swirled about his licentious personal life, his political affiliations, and his lack of American citizenship after a residency of more than 30 years. When the British-born director left the United States for a movie premiere in London, the attorney general denied him reentry.

The course is taught by Christopher Long, a veteran of the institute's series. Previous credits include courses on Werner Herzog, Lars von Trier, and New German Cinema. The lecture is held in the same building as the theater (opened in 1926 as the Seville). As with most of the institute's offerings, it begins 30 minutes before the movie starts and continues for at least 30 minutes after the credits roll.

The screening last week, of Chaplin's maudlin vaudeville epic Limelight (1952), drew 20 classroom attendees and a slightly larger crowd to the film itself. The self-indulgent Limelight is not for neophytes - Pauline Kael sneeringly titled her (first ever) review "Slimelight" - but that's the beauty of the institute's classes. There are some old movies that may go unappreciated if caught on late-night cable but can be enjoyed as minor gems and charming mistakes with the proper guidance.

The institute has six additional series planned through early fall. Next up is a July sequence of Hitchcock political thrillers from the 1930s and '40s. Other entries include Alec Guinness comedies and, in September, "A Celebration of David Lynch." Long's next class is July 8, a one-night look at A Hard Day's Night.

In the meantime, come watch Chaplin battle HUAC on the big screen. It's hardly the kind of billing that comes along very often.

Jawnts: CHAPLIN SERIES

"A King in New York" starts at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, 824 W. Lancaster Ave.

Cost is $6.50 for members; $12 for nonmembers.

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