AnhartLinkin
This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.
Mabel Munoz
Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?
Abegail Noëlle
While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.
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.
Desertman84
A Countess from Hong Kong is a comedy film and the last film written and directed by Charlie Chaplin and his only color film. The movie starred Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren, Tippi Hedren, and Sydney Earle Chaplin, Chaplin's second son.The story is based loosely on the life of a woman Chaplin met in France, named Moussia Sodskaya. She was a Russian singer and dancer that "was a stateless person marooned in France without a passport".Wealthy American diplomat Ogden Mears (Marlon Brando) is sailing from Hong Kong to Hawaii, where he hopes to meet and reconcile with his estranged wife Martha. However, while the ship takes on passengers in Hong Kong, a stowaway slips into Mears' suite. Natascha (Sophia Loren) is a White Russian countess who was forced to flee the country following the revolution and ended up in Hong Kong, where she earns a meager living as a dime-a-dance girl in a sleazy ballroom. When Mears discovers that Natascha is an uninvited guest in his quarters, she begs him to help her emigrate to the United States; when he refuses, Natascha tries a new tack, threatening to tell Martha that they've been sharing a stateroom if he doesn't cooperate. Mears grudgingly allows Natascha to stay with him and keep her secret until he can figure out a clever way to get rid of her. While many considered this as Chaplin's worst effort,it was still a lovely film.It may not be an excellent movie,but it is still a pleasure to watch for Brando and Loren alone.
nyp01
Well, *I'm* certainly not going to pan a Charlie Chaplin film. Like all his films, it's certainly worth viewing. While it doesn't completely gel as a whole, it is an artistic film - that is to say it is an expression of the artist's vision of life at a certain point in his life - for Chaplin, the final years. There is dialog about politics, about death, sex, love, art. These comments often fly by at the speed of lighthearted comedy, but it is worth the time to watch the film a second time to catch them all.I found Brando's performance mesmerizing, though, again, did not gel with the film as a whole. Add to this the fact that he is acting with much inferior actors (Sophia Loren and Sydney Chaplin do not come to mind as great actors of Brando's caliber, as impressive as they may be).My chief regret is that the film was not as funny as I'd hoped. The glaring exception was the scene with the bedridden British dowager, played to hilarious perfection by Margaret Rutherford.
tmsowell
This movie is painful to watch. Given the fact that Charlie Chaplin directed it, Marlon Brando starred in it, as well as two of the most beautiful actresses, Sophia Loren and Tippi Heddren, makes it more painful. Possibly Uwe Boll might have even done a better job of directing it.I think William Goldman said it best in one of his books on the movie business when he said that anyone who believes in the auteur school of film that thinks everything certain directors, like Charlie Chaplin, did was perfection should be sent to a desert island with nothing but A Countess from Hong Kong to watch.
