As Charlie Chaplin entered the twilight of his life he
struggled to get films made the way he was accustomed. Exiled from the United
States, he no longer had the playground of his own studio to make films in the
painstaking manner that was his style. Because
he was in thrall to a studio that was not his own, he had constraints in terms
of budget and time. After leaving the United States for England in 1952 he only
made two more films in the next 25 years.
We can possibly blame the quality of his final film, A Countess from Hong Kong, on this among
several other factors. For Chaplin, A
Countess from Hong Kong represented many firsts: first color film; first
widescreen film (despite his ridiculing of the format in A King in New York); first comedy not starring himself; first time
directing international movie stars. The effect of all these factors is a film
that is both not funny as well as technically shoddy.
Marlon Brando plays Ogden Mears, a wealthy millionaire
recently appointed U.S. Ambassador to Arabia, who finds himself in the
impossible situation of hiding the titular Russian Natascha (Sophia Loren), a
stowaway in his ocean liner cabin. As a married man and political figure, the
presence of a beautiful young woman in his quarters is potentially embarrassing,
so Ogden, in spite of himself, has to keep her squirreled away. This being a
light romantic comedy, it’s only a matter of time before they fall in love.
Lest you think Ogden a slime for jilting his wife (who turns up late in the
film played by Tippi Hedren), a throwaway line early in the film alerts us to
their impending divorce.
The biggest impediment to the film’s success as a comedy
might just be Brando’s performance. Loren’s performance is lithe and
tempestuous, but Brando is a dramatic actor not built for comedy. To see the
greatest actor of his day reduced to pratfalls and other shtick just feels
embarrassing. There was reportedly a great deal of tension between Brandon and
his director. Chaplin’s broad comedy style is anathema to Brando’s reliance on
Method acting and he was unable to play the part his way. His comedic timing is
way off. His delivery of dialogue and his physical attributes absolutely kill
any chance for laughs in his scenes.
Apart from Loren, the two other performances that stand
out are Patrick Cargill in the role of Hudson, Ogden’s valet who serves as a
marriage of convenience for Natascha to enter America legally, and Chaplin’s
son Sydney Chaplin as the straight man Harvey, Ogden’s lawyer and close friend.
Sydney Chaplin demonstrated good dramatic acting chops many years earlier in
Chaplin’s Limelight as a young
composer who falls in love with Claire Bloom. Though his acting credits were
few and minor in the intervening years, he shows poise and maturity as an
actor. Cargill brings some of the best notes of comedy to the whole film.
But even without the failed attempt at comedic acting
from Brando, the film is still poorly edited, with Gordon Hales missing the
mark and holding shots too long. The film should be paced much faster. And as
for the anamorphic widescreen – this film seems such an odd choice for Chaplin
to have switched to that format. Nearly all the action is confined to Ogden’s
state room on a ship. Much of the film feels a lot like a stage play (I think
the comedy might be well adapted to that medium) so Chaplin never really takes
full advantage of the wider palette for staging the action. He might have
achieved a better sense of claustrophobia within the cabin by keeping the ratio
to the old 16:9 standard.
I wonder if A
Countess from Hong Kong might have fared better if Chaplin had made it two
decades earlier, when this kind of fleet romantic comedy fluff was more in
vogue. At the end of the sixties, films were going through drastic changes.
1967 is often marked as the beginning of the New Hollywood with films like The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde getting all the press. All in all it’s a rather
sad final chapter in the life of a filmmaking genius who was so often ahead of
his time, but very oddly reverted to an outdated style for his swan song.
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