The consensus is that Chaplin’s swan song A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG is his metteur en scène, a dud pales into frivolity alongside his prior prestigious works, despite of the pairing of the most popular and acclaimed movie stars of that time, Brando and Loren.
Brando plays respectful American diplomat Ogden Mears (what a name!), who is appointed as the new ambassador to Saudi Arabia, en route to his homeland from his world-touring voyage, during a layover in Hong Kong, our titular Russian countess Natascha (Loren), whose aristocratic parents fled from the Russian Revolution and now parentless, stateless, reduced to a refugee entertaining in a seedy dance hall, stows away in Ogden’s ocean-liner cabin and hopes to start afresh in the land of plenty and freedom.
Totally throwing herself on his mercy, Natascha placates and implores a dithering Ogden to let her hide from the ship’s purser, and for the sake of his squeaky-clean reputation, although he is conveniently in the midst of a divorcing procedure from wife Martha (Hedren, composing herself graciously athwart a radiant Loren), Ogden eventually acquiesces and one thing leads to another, by the time when the ship reaches Honolulu, where Martha is requested to join her husband’s journey in order to maintain a harmonious veneer, Ogden and Natascha has naturally if rather superficially become an item, and her legal status is also facilitated by a bogus marriage arrangement between her and Ogden’s valet Hudson (Cargill), who goes all his way to bandy about his lawful but elusive right of consummation, makes piddling noise with physical antics and malaprop (“consommé”).
Chaplin’s typical slapstick dexterity cannot be traced to the two leads, as Brando is particularly at odds with the stuffy character he plays, polite but macho, Ogden never convinces us his abrupt infatuation with Natascha in the heat of their constant squabble, not that she fares better, seeing him more like a timely meal ticket than any physical attraction, Natascha has to balance a delicate job of being sexy but not flirtatious, petulant but not prissy, desperate but never self-abasing, though Loren acquits herself elegantly, her voluptuousness is free of any ghost of vulgarity and her pouting expression of obfuscation or resignation gives her an edge to exude sympathy to incredulous viewers.
Mostly confined inside a two-room cabin, A COUNTESS… is visually less lavish (albeit being Chaplin’s first and only color feature, shot in the England’sPinewood Studio) than one assumes of a Technicolor studio offering with a hefty price tag, and Chaplin’s directorial prowess is weighed down by the slight romance and sloppy development (Natascha’s exit strategy is too ludicrous to credit!), a seasick interlude shows nimble utility of camerawork, elsewhere, all is too prosaic to merit a shout-out, neither that Chaplin-penned strains THIS IS MY SONG is not dulcet, nor we are not amused to see a cameo of a bed-ridden Margaret Rutherford as a rich Russian dowager, had she been able to adopt the poor Natascha, the latter would be mercifully delivered from a humiliating amour démodé.
referential entries: Chaplin’s LIMELIGHT (1952, 8.3/10); Leo Carey’s AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (1957, 8.4/10).