A Countess from Hong Kong

Everybody wanted to like Chaplin's first film in ten years (and his last, as it turned out), but it just wasn't funny. His direction is antiquated and almost anonymous, and there is a strange stagy atmosphere, almost as if the cast were continually waiting for prompts. Apparently Chaplin worked hard with his actors, but the fact remains that even if Brando weren't hopelessly miscast as a diplomat who finds a Russian émigrée countess (Loren) stowed away in his cabin, it would still have been difficult for anyone to speak Chaplin's stilted lines with conviction. Margaret Rutherford comes off better than most as one of the ship's passengers.