A Countess from Hong Kong (1967)

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Screenplay: Charlie Chaplin

Cast: Marlon Brando as Ogden; Sophia Loren as Natascha; Sydney Chaplin as Harvey; Tippi Hedren as Martha; Patrick Cargill as Hudson; Michael Medwin as John Felix; Oliver Johnston as Clark

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

Released in the late Sixties, Charlie Chaplin's last film is that of an exile out of time. Beforehand, the last film he made was back in 1957 with A King in New York, to which ten years later, this final curtain in his career was seen as a notorious ending. I can see the film in this context out of sympathetic, that also at least the attitude to the film, alongside its visible issues, stem from the fact that this was a period of considerable change for Hollywood that would have repercussions for the seventies in American cinema. The weight of expectation would have to have been considered too, as this is not the film of the happy little tramp of yore. He is still, kind and thoughtful, but time has passed and his cinema had aged as well.

Chaplin is of course legendary, still iconic into the modern day from his image, before you even consider the films he made and starred in from the silent era to The Great Dictator (1940), a film itself that was considered controversial to make as, uncomfortably, there was a period before the United States entered the Second World War that Hollywood were even keeping themselves open to marketing films in Nazi Germany. During and after World War II however, things did not go well for the real life Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin. His affair with Joan Barry, an aspiring actress, would lead to a series of trials which would severely harm his public reputation alongside that it would involve a paternity suit. His next film Monsieur Verdoux (1947), an incredibly dark film based on a real subject, was not the highly regarded film in decades after, but a reviled and unsuccessful one as it was a critique of capitalism, and also had Chaplin playing a man who weds and kills off older rich women. Then there were the accusations of being a Communist, on the tip of the Red Scare and McCarthyism that would burn through Hollywood in the fifties but had already had an effect in the late forties, which finally lead to him becoming an exile in 1952 when United States Attorney General James P. McGranery revoked Chaplin's re-entry permit and Chaplin cut his ties to the country when he would only be allowed to re-enter if he submitted to an interviewer concerning his political views and moral behaviour.

His exile led to three films - Limelight (1955), A King in New York, and A Countess from Hong Kong, the last in the sixties and virtually out of place of the times. Based on a real life experience, in which Chaplin met a stateless Russian ballet dancer in the 1920s, the film had existed as far back as the 1930s as a script called Stowaway for his then-wife Paulette Goddard The film feels of an entirely different era in general, even beyond this origin, with the only detail that suggests its actual time being that he can be explicit in discussing that the titular Countess Natascha (Sophia Loren), the child of Russian exiled by the communist revolution to Hong Kong, has had to even become a mistress as a teenager to survive, a detail that might have had to be implied back when Will Hays and his Production Code would have effected Chaplin's American productions.

The production is alien in its nature, alien to the time period it finally came to. Its story feels from the decade before - Marlon Brando as the heir of an oil tycoon's success, hostile to the fact Natascha has snuck into his room and refuses to leave until she can be snuck into the States, before turning into a romance between them. There is an extreme minimalism, where the camera rarely if ever moves and editing it perfunctory or quiet to be polite. The only touch, a charming one, which shows there is still experimentation is Chaplin's obsession with blurring the line between diegetic and non-diegetic music as the score we hear turns out to be music being manipulated or turned off on the radio. Aside from the fact Chaplin helped with the score, so had a bias for it to stand out for the viewer continually, it is a spark of charm in a film where the camera remains static and everything else is put together without fuss.

This is also Chaplin's only colour film, and this opens up the question of what the Sixties was actually like. By 1967, the trend of American cinema changed, leading to some of the biggest vitriol to the film in a year where Bonnie and Clyde (1967) would have a tremendous impact on the landscape alongside later films. The film's aesthetic, when the cruise gets to Hawaii by way of a British production not shot in the United States, is Sixties gaudy chic. As much as we imagine this the time of subversion and psychedelic, I cannot help but think that Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) may have asked an important question of whether the underground artistic movements and films, barring some crossover hits, were having the real grip on the culture or whether we have accidentally presumed it to be. Even in context of this being a film by a man unstuck in time, there was a lot of this especially by the Hawaii scenes, and the rich colours, that evoked exotica and lounge album covers. It shows nothing of what would be considered trendy and "down" with the youth in its story of countesses or this type of comedic slapstick.

One of the film's biggest divisive factors however is the casting a man whose style of acting would influence the films that would be becoming more popular, the biggest issue for any viewer for me personally what you make of Marlon Brando. Brando in a comedic role is such a perplexing difference, and Brando and Chaplin did not get on well in the damndest. Even Sophie Loren was not impressed by the method actor, which made the film much more difficult to work on. Brando's legacy of great roles for me has been tainted by his legacy for being utterly obstinate and a pain to work with - be it asking for less scenes in Superman (1978) despite being paid a great deal of money to star in the production, or the notorious history of The Island of Doctor Moreau (1996), which has its own documentary* just to deal with the nightmare that New Line Pictures production was, but had Brando getting his own way among the many problems that production had, such as demanding that the titular Moreau and God to his created beast people have his lines giving to him over a hidden receiver and having an ice bucket on his head onscreen.

You can argue the film is mainly quaint, but Brando is going to be a huge divisive factor as he is not an actor used to broad romantic roles, but stiff and continually perturbed by what he is dealing with. On one hand, it feels palpable he was not comfortable here, whilst on the other it does work as comedy to see such a self serious and wound-up actor not being able to have peace to take a bath, stuck in dressing gowns or being unable to find clothes for Loren that are not five times her size. Loren in contrast is fully alert and captivating as a lovable figure. Even if the film feels stuffy at times, she alongside a cast full of scene stealers keeps the production afloat. Chaplin for all the holes that can be dented in his own personal life was still a humane individual, and you can see his utter sympathy for this character of Natascha. It helps so much that Loren is a needed energy.

Trust me in saying A Countess from Hong Kong is not a trendy film, at times soaking it in a film with the sentimental emotion of a soft jazz ballad which I was honestly won over even though it is syrupy. The very little use of camera movement, minimal and conventional editing, and its general aesthetic is disappointing in the knowledge of Charlie Chaplin's legacy, fitting what people warn of when it comes to directors' final films, where as older (even elderly) figures their work is entirely changed. This notion is not really true, when figures like Martin Scorsese makes the profane The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) in his seventies, but there is also the fact that, when he makes his cameo, Chaplin is an old man. He will not be able to have done the pratfalls of youth, and I would argue that sentimentality was always there. Even The Great Dictator, which had a significant political message at a profound time, plays its heart on its sleeve in the same way as this final film. The dynamic nature of his early comedic work is the notable change, where this no longer had the dynamic nature of before. A lot of its humour instead is from comic timing and a bit of raciness, actor Patrick Cargill as the valet Hudson stealing scenes when he is roped in to being Loren's hastily arranged husband and finding a thrill to it though there is little chance of anything transpiring. It is a curiosity, in the truest sense, as these are the type of films by legends which show them waver, to be human, to which I feel nothing but a pure fondness whether it is cool to admire nowadays or not. Such signs offer warmth in knowing a human being like me made these films and not an indistinguishable entity.

======

* Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau (2014)