“Just a little sloppy – nothing serious.”

Everybody gets seasick in this next part of A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG. No evidence that Chaplin has paid to put his set on rockers, thus inviting comparison with the climax of THE GOLD RUSH or with the similar scenes in THE IMMIGRANT. He’s just having the camera rock to and from — the most extensive use of camera movement in a Chaplin film.

A reasonably well-choreographed bit where an ashtray with fuming cigar is pushed around, nauseating Sid, then Marlon, then Sophia. If the three actors were comedically in tune with each other, their roles, and the material, this might have been really good. Chaplin never had to worry much about chemistry, since he was always the lead, and everybody danced to his tune.

Weird grainy bit where the film has obviously been blown up, to reframe and hide a defect, or what? It certainly results in an odd composition.

It comes right before Chaplin’s cameo, where he says, of the stormy seas, “Just a little sloppy, nothing serious,” which they should have used as the movie’s slogan. Comparing the cameo with the matching one in A WOMAN OF PARIS, we can note that they both snap the film into sharper focus, but also make us want to abandon the main characters’ story and follow this little fellow. But Chaplin’s scene here is just a LINE — nothing visual. Obviously you could top the line by having Chaplin stagger or look bilious, but that doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone.

Film is, in most cases, a young man’s game. There’s a terrible danger in thinking you’ve figured this lark out, that your efforts are following the established rules, that they are good enough. The doubt felt by beginners is nearly always preferable to the comfortable certainty of the veteran — except with those rare veterans who have things figured out CORRECTLY (for them), or who have retained both the youthful terror and the what-the-hell bravado.

Ahah! Chaplin comes back, and now he’s feeling the mal-de-mer himself. So I was wrong, he does top the topper. And Brando was apparently moved and amused by his performance, so that his own behaviour improved and he started speaking to his director again.

For some reason we now learn that Ogden/Marlon has recurring bouts of malaria, and Sophia nurses him through this sickness — but we never see any of this. Odd, since this seems to have changed Ogden’s attitude to Natasha/Sophia. In other words, a critical character scene is missing. On the other hand, it doesn’t sound like a GOOD scene.

Suddenly Angela Scoular tears into the film, the only actor to date who seemingly knows she’s in a comedy. Scoular, an inventive, sexy and startling presence, shakes things up a bit. The movies never quite knew what to do with her, though her bit in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE is impressive. If only all Bond girls were like that. She’s decided, for the sake of something to do, to make her meaningless character here insanely posh, and this is fun. Did Chaplin not notice that she was in a different (but better!) register from everyone else around her? Maybe he did, because he cuts away from her talking to show Loren playing solitaire, and then cuts back — how much Scoular gold is on the cutting room floor?

Later, he cuts to a random trumpeter. Anything to escape this damned ENTERTAINMENT.

What’s funny about this character, in the way AS has decided to play her, is that she talks only for her own amusement and wonderment, and enjoys all her own amazing thoughts, with no interest whatever in who she’s speaking to. One would hope Brando, usually terrific at reacting in-the-moment to other players and situations, would come to life in response, but his work here continues to be flat and grudging, although there are hints that he’s realising he’s dancing in the arms of a madwoman…

I’m reminded of George Miller’s words to his cameraman on MAD MAX; FURY ROAD (it’s on my mind as I’m very much looking forward to seeing FURIOSA on Friday) — “Forget everything you know about widescreen cinematography. Always put the subject in the exact centre of the frame, because at the speed I will be cutting, the audience won’t have time to search the screen for the subject…” (paraphrasing)

Chaplin doesn’t need to forget about widescreen framing because he’s never learned it, so he puts his characters in the exact centre for their medium shots, making this a super-easy film for the pan-and-scanners to crop for TV. They wouldn’t need to touch a switch once. It accounts for some of the weird deadness — it might have been shot by Lars Von Trier’s robot cameraman.

Sidney Chaplin has a lot of screen time but a thankless, purposeless role. As Ogden’s friend and fixer, he might have productively been used as antagonist to Natasha, who after all could derail his friend/boss’s career. Or he could fall for her himself. Instead we see him trying to play Cupid, and express Ogden’s romantic feelings for Natasha, which seems a peculiarly useless way of filming romance. I guess if it were done brilliantly, it could be brilliant… Lubitschian indirection or something. Trouble is, it’s not that Ogden is unaware of his own emotions (which can be effective in a love story) — he’s just kind of indifferent to them.

Oh, adding to the deadness — Chaplin tends to cut between actors on their lines, as if this were a Jack Webb Dragnet-style procedural. Very little in the way of reaction shots or thinking. Again, a roboticism invades the process.

“I’ve been wondering about the immortality of the soul,” says Geraldine Chaplin, suddenly appearing for no reason as Marlon’s new dance partner. What is it with these spacey narcissistic women all at once running amuck in this ballroom? They’re very welcome, but they also make us realise what we’ve been missing during the first my God HOUR of this thing.

I guess their function is to make Ogden realise what he’s been missing — a woman who eats food and takes an interest in corporeal matters and understands what a conversation is. If the stars were able to suggest any real connection this would work better. And sadly Chaplin doesn’t think of making Sophia’s male dance partner’s equally bananas. This would be a perfect venue for Skye Dumont, the suave Hungarian loverboy from EYES WIDE SHUT.

Occasionally the film offers up a composition that feels like a comic situation. Loren eventually does dance with a character, a pushy fellow (impossible to work out who the actor is) who knows her as a dance hall hostess or bar girl. Everybody ends up at the bar. I wish the shot was held longer. It LOOKS like a fun scene from a sophisticated comedy, doesn’t it? God knows it isn’t.

Producer Jerry Epstein played his own cameo as a barman, but, though he enjoyed performing, didn’t like doing it on camera, so his stuff seems to have been cut.

This corridor does NOT look like a fun scene from a sophisticated comedy, though, does it? But it’s nice.

If you want to resurrect the ghost of screwball — which nobody has managed to do, alas — I think lots of white or cream would be useful. But then, there’s lots of cream in Ogden’s suite, and whenever I’m in there I get cabin fever. The gold trim doesn’t help, nor the hotel furniture and that chair the colour of zombie mustard.

At the exact one hour mark, we get the first clinch, which seems like a good time to say

TO BE CONTINUED

Sea Heir

Marlon Brando’s Ogden is the son of an oil baron, see, an heir, and he’s at sea, see?

After hanging around in Ogden’s suite for what feels like enough time to watch ANDREI RUBLEV in, apart from a quick trip to The Shop, Chaplin’s camera joins Chaplin’s son and Chaplin’s disgruntled leading man on deck, and some relief is felt. An actual view of the sea and sky might have relieved the cabin fever even more, but it would only have been a process shot, so maybe not.

I think it may have been Jacques Rivette who called Chaplin “cinema’s greatest editor” (I’m wrong, it was Straub) — I always thought that was crazy. But mostly the cutting in this film is fluid, we get to see what we need to see when we need to see it, and the film’s deficits are all to do with the material itself. But there’s a startling mismatch here, even though it’s very slight. Sidney Chaplin steps into a new position and takes hold of some kind of pole or railing. He’s only just attaining his final position when we cut to a single on him, now completely settled. It’s very disconcerting, and hard to work out how such a mistake occurred: why couldn’t we have held a few frames longer on the outgoing wide? Maybe Sid immediately moved out of position so the continuity error would have been even worse? It’s very odd. The two pics above show the frames either side of the cut — note the left hand, and the face.

When we then cut to Brando, he’s leaning against a wall, and it’s also a slight surprise as we never got to see him go there.

If Chaplin is not on top form as director — and let’s face it, this is his worst feature as director by aeons, and inferior to every one of his shorts — some blame may belong to Brando, who misbehaved early on, was brought into line by Chaplin, then took offense at the way Sid was being directed (“Get the lead out of your ass!”) and refused to be directed by Chaplin at all, forcing CC to convey notes via producer Jerry Epstein. Epstein writes that nothing could diminish Chaplin’s enthusiasm for the film, but this MUST have made things less enjoyable, and enjoyment is important in a comedy, I find. You have to be able to watch a scene played out with the innocent eyes of a first-time audience member, and assess whether it’s funny. This involves forgetting your worries about the schedule and budget and upcoming challenges and life in general. Chaplin had plenty of experience at this. I’ve also been told by pros that it’s not necessary for the director to like their actors. I always have, luckily, and if I didn’t I guess I could pretend… Chaplin usually worked with friends (and lovers). I wouldn’t blame him if he was thrown a bit by Brando’s behaviour. (It wouldn’t be the last time Brando pulled this kind of stunt: the last time he pulled it was THE SCORE, his last film.

Brando taking umbrage at Sid being mistreated is somewhat admirable: but everybody, including Sid, told him that Sid didn’t mind. Sid felt Charlie was just trying to help him be good in the movie. Chaplin was gentle to everyone else and rough on Sid, and that didn’t sit right with Brando. Epstein writes that at a certain point in the shoot, when Chaplin performed his cameo, suddenly Brando was all smiles and the rest of the movie was plain sailing. But in his memoir Brando still harps on Chaplin’s “sadism.”

…and, right on cue, here’s Charlie.

I haven’t even made it to ten minutes this time, more like three, but I’ve said some things.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Shop

From what ought to be the end of act one, thirty minutes in, to forty minutes in, A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG consists almost entirely of people being startled by a buzzer. Pure Pavlovian response humour.

But at 35 mins, Brando briefly exits his dismal suite and goes to a ship shop, called The Shop, to buy a wardrobe for his glamorous stowaway. They don’t have any stock, though, only samples. But somehow Brando is able to get some. They prove comically oversized — you could fit two Sophia Lorens inside the skirt, if the budget ran to such extravagance.

Not really clear why La Loren puts the H-cup bra on backwards, over her (Brando’s) pyjamas. What we call a cheap gag, I think, not in the sense of being coarse or trashy, but in the sense of being unmotivated. Equally nonsensical is Brando chasing Loren around trying to rip off her pajamas. It’s not sexual, he suddenly wants his pyjamas back. It’s obviously meant to be sexy, though. It’s mainly baffling and out of character, but from it we get this poster:

LAST TANGO IN HONG KONG?

Then we get the bizarre sight of Brando having a press conference while still in his shorts and robe, holding the sleeve of the pyjamas. It’s bizarre that the press is admitted while he’s undressed, but nobody seems to mind. I’ve had dreams like this — but the surrealism doesn’t seem intentional. The sleeve is supposed to be the bizarre element, but all of it is.

Brando being the ambassador to Saudi Arabia, a job he didn’t particularly want, seems quite low-stakes here as a creator of comic jeopardy. Had Chaplin gone with his supposed first plan and made Ogden a presidential hopeful things would be more taut, but he didn’t want to insult JFK’s memory. Another argument for making the film earlier than 1967. The mild hints of sex would have been more risque circa 1960-62.

Sidney Chaplin gets some actual comedy to do! After accidentally dousing one photographer with a rashly-uncorked champagne bottle (not funny — Sid is of higher status than the press, so sploogeing them lacks the zing of a cream pie in the kisser of a pompous businessman or snooty dowager — he goes to fetch a towel, and finds Loren, in the bathroom.

This entails a brief empty frame, where we linger on the ajar bathroom door — a stab at the Lubitschian — and then Sid rushing out, freezing, and then turning to face the camera. This warmed my heart. Like father like son. Chaplin grants his eldest living child his own superpower, breaking the fourth wall. He hasn’t allowed either of his expensive stars to do that.

Not that it ever felt like there WAS a fourth wall — the film has been so frontal and stagey, in the usual Chaplin way, all the sets feel like they’re wide open, though no doubt the designer supplied “floating” walls in the unlikely event of CC ordering a reverse angle. They’re over there in the corner somewhere, gathering dust.

And that’s it! Minute 40 is achieved.

TO BE CONTINUED