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.
