Prismark10
A Countess from Hong Kong is romantic farce with Marlon Brando playing a would be Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Ogden Mears who meets a down on her luck Russian countess Natascha (Sophia Loren) who is stranded in Hong Kong working as a sleazy dance girl. She sneaks aboard into the cruise ship and into his grand cabin to get to America. Mears in order to avoid a scandal keeps her hidden before he can figure how to get her out of the ship.Charlie Chaplin who wrote and directed this, his final film also makes a brief cameo appearance as the ship's aged steward. The film is really an old fashioned farce and looks like a stage play with plenty of knocking and banging of doors. It does not contain the political satire of other Chaplin feature films.The film was shot in England and I could not figure out what kind of accent Brando had as he sounded more mid Atlantic. Whereas Loren was beautiful and more adept at humour, Brando does seem ill at ease with his character and the comedy but later in his life in the movie, The Freshman, Brando showed he was skilled at light comedy.Yet the movie is worth it for its curiosity value of Brando appearing in a Chaplin film with Margaret Rutherford, Tippi Hedren, Patrick Cargill and Sophia Loren.
tieman64
This is a brief review of Charlie Chaplin's last six feature films.A comical take on Lang's "Metropolis" (1927), Chaplin's "Modern Times" opens with the words "a story of industry and individual enterprise, humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness!", an ironic jab at the mantras of industrial capitalism. The film then finds Chaplin reprising his iconic role as "the tamp", a poverty-stricken but lovable outcast whose ill-fitting clothes epitomise, amongst other things, his inability to fit in.The film watches as the tramp struggles to survive in a depressed economy. Like "Metropolis", it satirises labour, management and dehumanising working conditions. Elsewhere life for the worker is seen to be precarious, alternatives to playing the game are but death or prison, giant clocks speak to the daily grid of blue-collar workers, bosses are shown to be obsessed with speed and production, the property class relies on police brutality and all-encompassing surveillance, and the workplace itself is painted as an absurdest torture chamber. The film ends with the tramp on a road, America's future uncertain."Modern Times" made waves when it was released. It was banned in fascist Germany and Italy, then allies of the West, and scorned by those in power in the United States. It was also heavily praised in the Soviet Union and France, particularly by philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merlau-Pony. The film's middle section, which featured Chaplin waving a red flag and unwittingly leading communists and worker unions, would get Chaplin on several government watch-lists.Chaplin followed "Times" with "The Great Dictator". Hollywood studios wanted the film scuttled, so Chaplin financed it himself. It contains two criss-crossing plots, one about a Jewish barber who is essentially persecuted by Nazis, the other about a brutal dictator, a stand in for Adolf Hitler. Funny, scary and sad, the film would rock the US establishment. Hitler was, at the time, a US ally and good for business. What's more, he was viewed by those in power as a tool to destroy communist Russia. For many, Chaplin was a "subverisive" who was "inciting war with an ally". Deemed particularly offencive was a last act speech in which Chaplin urges the people of the world to "love one another", "throw away international barriers" and foster an "international brotherhood". Though deliberately vague, this speech was viewed as inflammatory. Was Chaplin extolling the virtues of the United States or the Soviet Union? Regardless, the US' approach to the conflicts in Europe promptly shifted. It became an ally with Russia, Hitler became the enemy and Germany attacked Russia. In the blink of an eye, "Dictator" went from being sacrilege to prophetic.Chaplin, British, was born into extreme poverty and often found himself sleeping on the streets of London. As such, he identified with his "tramp" character completely, as did millions word-wide, who saw themselves in the tramp: desolate, poor and forever bumbling down life's highways. Prior to shooting "Times", Chaplin would embark on a tour of the world, intent on seeing the effects of poverty. He'd talk to many prominent figures, most notably Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Einstein and Gandhi.As Chaplin grew in consciousness, so would FBI files on Chaplin. He was put under government surveillance and forced to appear before a Senate subcommittee in 1941 where he was accused of being "anti American" and an "unofficial communist". Many newspapers, including the Times, began a campaign attacking Chaplin, and called for his deportation. In the mid 1940s he was charged with the Mann Act and the FBI would collude with newspapers to smear Chaplin as a sex maniac who "perverted American culture". From here on, conservative political pressure groups would attack each new Chaplin release. Some of his films would be boycotted or outright banned. In 1947 he'd be brought before the HUAC committee.Chaplin followed "Dictator" up with "Monsieur Verdoux". A black comedy, the idea for which came from Orson Welles, the films stars Chaplin as a bank clerk who loses his job and so murders women for cash and land. The film's point is explicit: if war is an extension of diplomacy, then murder is the logical extension of business. And so banking terminology is used to rationalise murder, weapons manufactures are idolised and the poor are condemned for trying to play by the rules of the wealthy. "Numbers sanctify!" Chaplain says, pointing to Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the ruthlessness of post-war capitalism; kill millions and you're a hero.Next came "Limelight", Chaplin's ode to silent film. Elegiac and autobiographical, the film stars Chaplin and the legendary Buster Keaton as two fading comedians. A meditation on time's passing, the film's also relentlessly optimistic; man must assert his will, his desires, no matter how glum the times! The film would be banned from several US theatres. Chaplin himself was swiftly banned from entering the US and several of his assets were seized. He'd live in Switzerland henceforth."A King In New York" followed. It finds Chaplin playing an usurped "dictator" who seeks refuge in America. Also autobiographical, the film pokes fun at various aspects of US culture, its irrational hatred of all things left-wing and the way in which humans are both always branding and refuse to look beyond the political, beyond superficial branding, to tolerate even the slightest bit of difference or dissent. Chaplin's son would play a hilarious anarcho-communist, but the film as whole messily mixed silent gags with sound comedy.Chaplin's "A Countess from Hong Kong" confirms that Chaplin's films were moving from the lower to the upper echelons of society. Here Sophia Loren plays a Russian "tramp" who is taken in by a wealthy politician (Marlon Brando). His worst feature, the film watches as "humane" capitalism benevolently absorbs the "detritus" of Russia and Asia. Chaplin accepted an honorary Oscar in 1972. He received the longest standing ovation in Oscar history.4/10
CitizenCaine
A Countess From Hong Kong was the last film Charles Chaplin directed, produced, and acted in, though he appears only very briefly as an old ship steward. The film stars a woefully miscast Marlon Brando as Ogden Mears, a U.S. Ambassador, who meets Sophia Loren, a runaway Russian Countess from Hong Kong. She stows away on Brando's ship, imposing on him while aboard. What could have have been a screwball farce in the 1930's or 1940's became a resounding dud in the 1960's. The script is the biggest letdown, and apparently Chaplin wrote it many years ago without revisiting it before shooting. The film simply isn't funny beyond a chuckle or two. Why he decided to cast Brando is anyone's guess, but the two did not get along during filming at all. Loren tries hard, but she would certainly have fared better with another light comedy type of actor. The film spends far too much time in Brando's room, and one gets the idea Chaplin had to economize on the sets somehow to be able to re-shoot scenes due to the rigidity of filming on a tight schedule in England. The always underused Tippi Hedren only appears in the last twenty minutes as Brando's suspicious wife. Chaplin's son Sydney as Harvey and Patrick Cargill as Hudson are the two bright spots in the film. Margaret Rutherford appears as Miss Gaulswallow in a nice cameo. Geraldine Chaplin appears as a young lass in the dancing scene, as well as Chaplin's younger children Josephine and Victoria. It's a very disappointing final film from Chaplin. *1/2 of 4 stars.
