Film Review
A Countess from Hong Kong is
the film that should never have been made - the far from glorious
closing chapter in one of the most glorious of screen careers.
It's fairly widely acknowledged that this was Charlie Chaplin's worst
film, his first foray into colour and widescreen, offering audiences
the enticing prospect of Marlon Brando starring alongside Sophie
Loren. Had it been made a few years earlier, when Chaplin was
more in command of his artistic faculties and better able to
distinguish gem from paste,
A
Countess from Hong Kong might have been a commendable swansong,
not the disappointing and costly turkey it ended up as.
Chaplin began work on the film almost immediately after he had
published his now celebrated memoirs, aged 77. He had originally
conceived it in the 1930s, then titled
Stowaway, as a vehicle for Paulette
Goddard, who featured in two of his best films:
Modern
Times (1936) and
The Great Dictator
(1940). Thirty years on, tastes had changed but Chaplin stuck
with his somewhat decrepit idea of romantic comedy, relying too much
perhaps on Brando and Loren to bring it a modern dimension.
Chaplin himself appears in the film only briefly, in two cameo
appearances as the ship's white-haired steward. The only other
film in which he did not have a leading role was his earlier
A
Woman of Paris (1923), which had also been a substantial
commercial failure.
A Countess from Hong Kong
looks glossy but it is unbearably staid and vacuous. The
Brando-Loren pairing has none of the magic that Chaplin and gambled on,
and Brando looks frankly ill-at-ease playing comedy, leaving Loren to
carry the film by herself, with mixed results. Tippi Hedren turns
up far too late in the film to inject some life into it, and a brief
scene with Margaret Rutherford is unaccountably weird. Overlong
and preposterously stagy, the film quickly outstays its welcome and
Chaplin's stale concoction of out-dated sentimentality and forced
humour makes sitting through the entire film something of an endurance
test. It's a sad, pathetic end to a career that brought so much
joy to every corner of the world.
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Charles Chaplin film:
The Kid (1921)
Film Synopsis
Ogden Mears is a wealthy American diplomat who is soon to be made
ambassador to Saudi Arabia. During a stopover in Hong Kong, he
meets Natasha, a Russian countess who scrapes a dubious living as a
dancer and prostitute. Tired of her life in the East, Natasha
stows away aboard an ocean liner bound for the United States, hiding in
Ogden's quarters. The diplomat, wary against causing a scandal
that might jeopardise his personal ambitions, is understandably
nonplussed by this turn of events and insists that the countess return
from whence she came. Natasha eventually wins him round and he
concocts a plan to get her off the ship by getting her to marry his
valet, Hudson. All is well until Ogden's estranged wife shows up
and threatens the scheme...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.