Possibly the worst film ever made by a great director. Chaplin made "A Countess from Hong Kong" in 1966, nine years after "A King in New York" which, although a failure at the time, now seems like a lost masterpiece compared with this totally unfunny farce. Working in colour for the first time and with two Oscar-winning actors, Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren, this could have been, should have been the final work of genius rather than the self-indulgent disaster it turned out to be.
Brando is the American diplomat sailing from Hong Kong to America and Loren is the exiled Russian countess who has stowed away in his cabin. Loren looks as gorgeous as she ever did and even manages to give a comic performance of some depth but Brando looks very uncomfortable as if he knows just what a load of merde he's landed himself in, (it's one of his few really bad performances; even Sydney Chaplin as his best friend out-acts him).Charlie himself turns up in a cameo and it's sad to see him make his final appearance in something as bad as this. It's now fashionable to try to find favour with the picture as if someone like Chaplin could never have made anything quite so terrible but let me assure you that with "A Countess from Hong Kong" he could and he did.
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