Word: chaplinitis
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...film; but a flashback reveals the tragic truth of Cordelier's folly; when he first became M. Opale, he felt liberated, physically light as air, uninhibited for the first time. Barrault, a brilliant mimist (Les Enfants du Paradis) plays Opale-Hyde as if he were doing a Chaplin imitation. Only in successive transformations does Opale become dangerously depraved, murderous, and maniacal...
Predictably, Natascha stands out as the only multi-faceted character in the film. The first important side of her personality is Natascha as a woman; she is beautiful, enigmatic, infinitely resourceful. Yet basically simple and romantic. In short, she is a tried-and-true Chaplin stereotype, a modern version of the ideal girl Chaplin worships in City Lights and so many of his other films. The second side of Natascha is more interesting: Natascha as Chaplin. With his coaching, Loren frequently gives a brilliant imitation. Wearing Brando's huge baggy pajamas, she waddles as if she were the tramp...
...references don't stop there, for Chaplin blesses Loren with the wonderful close-ups he reserved for himself in his previous films. It is to Chaplin's credit as a major artist that the film's excellent romantic climax is not a scene but a single close-up of Loren as she watches Brando's boat sail away, thinking he is on it. The shot lasts a full fifteen seconds, and is truly unnerving...
...Chaplin still feels that a movie camera should photograph the action in front of it, and do nothing else. Consequently, his camera almost never moves, and the compositions, not always pleasing in themselves, are purely functional. If he cuts to an off-balance full shot of a room, with Brando in screen right and a door in screen left, we know instantly that someone will open the door within a few moments. This simplistic concept of film-making has made Chaplin unfashionable with technique-conscious students. But the film-making in A Countess from Hong Kong is highly sophisticated...
...Chaplin adhered to the philosophy of film-making he created, long after it had been abandoned by the mainstream. But this doesn't make his art old fashioned. A Countess From Hong Kong is modern cinema, though not, perhaps, what we have come to expect from modern cinema. Take the new Chaplin film on its own terms; contrary to all those patronizing critics, the old man hasn't really lost his touch, and Countess is a glorious romance...