The last film that the great silent icon Charlie Chaplin directed, the British romantic comedy The Countess from Hong Kong, was was also his only film in color.
Grade: C+ (** out of *****)
If the premise is rather simple and ordinary–an American diplomat falls in love with a stowaway on a cruise–the cast is not, featuring prominently its stars Brando and Sophia Loren.
They were not the director’s first choice. In 1963, a friend of Chaplin suggested Loren for the lead role of Natascha. For the character of Ogden, he originally wanted Rex Harrison or Cary Grant, but eventually Brando was cast. By 1965, both Brando and Loren committed without even reading a single page of the script.
The idea is based on a visit that Chaplin made to Shanghai in 1931, where he met some aristocrats who had escaped the Russian Revolution. Destitute and without a country, their status was of the lowest grade. The men ran rickshaws and the women worked in cheap dance halls. When WWII broke out, many of the aristocrats had died and the younger generation migrated to Hong Kong where their plight got worse.
Chaplin had written a draft of the script in the 1930s under the title “The Stowaway,” as a starring vehicle for his then-wife Paulette Goddard. However, Goddard signed a contract with Paramount, and left Chaplin the following year.
It was loosely based on the life of former Russian aristocrat, Moussia “Skaya” Sodskaya, whom Chaplin met in France in 1921. In her 1922 book, “My Trip Abroad,” she detailed how she became a singer-dancer, a stateless person marooned in France without a passport.
Brando plays Ogden Mears, a wealthy, elegant and snobby American diplomat traveling by ocean liner for a new post in Saudi Arabia. After a drunken night, he discovers Natascha (Loren), a “White Russian” refugee and former hostess, hiding in his cabin’s closet.
The plot is a bedroom farce centered on concealment and survival, excluding sexual pursuit. Desperate to reach America, Natascha lacks a passport. Ogden’s primary motive is to protect his reputation and diplomatic career; caught with a stowaway in his cabin, his career would be ruined.
Ogden and his valet Hudson concoct a plan to keep Natascha hidden from the crew and passengers. To get her off the ship and provide her with legal status, Ogden arranges a marriage of convenience between Natascha and Hudson.
In the film’s old-fashioned and predictable ending, Ogden abandon his high-society life and diplomatic career in order to be with Natascha.
There is not much tension from the constant threat of being discovered during endless inspections and social visits. Doors, closets, and bathrooms open and close every couple of minutes in a manner that recall the social farces of Feydeau, but the formal execution is lousy, and Chaplin seems to be out of touch with the zeitgeist–in Britain and America.
What was timely and humorous in the early 1930s was no longer so in the late 1960s. Chaplin’s focus on the hurdles of Natascha’s statelessness, and the comedic variations of where to hide gets repetitious, even if it allows Loren to change her dresses; at one point, she’s wearing Brando’s pajamas.
Though, occasionally there are exterior shots of the ship’s deck and the blue ocean, most of the tale is set indoors, with visual pleasure utterly dependent on the charisma of the two stars.
This was one of two films that Chaplin directed in which he did not play a major role (the other was 1923’s A Woman of Paris). Chaplin appears briefly as an Old Steward, but it’s still a family affair, with his son playing a secondary part, and his three daughters, Geraldine, Josephine and Victoria makin cameos as Girl at Dance (on the ship) and as Two Young Girls (entering the Waikiki Hotel), respectively.
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, director of Mears’ oil company
John Paul as The Captain
Angela Scoular as The Society Girl
Margaret Rutherford as Gaulswallow
Bill Nagy as Crawford
Dilys Laye as Saleswoman
