A Countess from Hong Kong : Charlie Chaplin

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Before browsing Chaplin’s A Countess from Hong Kong [1967] on the internet, I did not know Marlon Brando was in it. Moreover, I didn’t have any prior knowledge that Chaplin wasn’t in it. I think it was one of the biggest cinematic slid that the world was deprived of having both of them in the same movie. What a great loss, what a boundless sorrow it was!

 

This first and last color feature film was one of his most intellectually tight films based on contemporary issues whose background started back from World War I and stretched to after World War II, begun with the Russian revolution and continued with the refugee crisis in America. As Macabee in A King in New York [1957] stated that if you need a passport as mandatory to travel the world then it is evident you are not free. This very identity crisis linked with nationalism was played and screened with full fledge.

 

The narrative of Russian countess, played by Sophia Loren as Natacha and of American ambassador, acted by Marlon Brando as Ogden had been composed with sheer dexterity and seamlessness.

 

This was the last. I have been saturated with Charles Chaplin’s films. But when I came to know the testimonials of his working approach given by many creative workers especially Marlon Brando. I felt a bit depressed but I recalled Steve Jobs would go with a similar approach in the Apple workplace. I resumed that it is a general scenario of the creative mind but we should be more focused on the creation. I fell into the pod of universal moral evaluation that should we go after the medium or should we look after the consequence.

 

So, to speak, I am prone to be with the consequence, the creation; but I have my watchful eyes on the medium, the creative process and the agent, the creator with a lesser degree.  

 

 

A Countess from Hong Kong [1967]

Charlie Chaplin

English, UK.

 

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