When she realised that she had a small part as Brando's estranged wife, she asked Chaplin to expand her role. She had high hopes for the film, until she received the script. This is Tippi Hedren's first feature film after her break with director Alfred Hitchcock in The Birds. Shooting began on 25 January 1966 at Pinewood Studios it was frequently interrupted by Brando arriving late and then being hospitalised with appendicitis, Chaplin and Brando having the flu, and Loren remarrying Carlo Ponti. By 1965, both Brando and Sophia Loren agreed to play their parts without reading a script. For the character of Ogden, he originally wanted Rex Harrison or Cary Grant to play the role, but eventually Marlon Brando was cast. In 1963, a friend of Chaplin suggested to him Sophia Loren for the lead role of Natascha, the Russian princess. In the years after, Chaplin worked on the script in increments, "adding a bit here, cutting a bit there." He had written a draft of the script in the late 1930s under the working title The Stowaway, as a starring vehicle for his then-wife Paulette Goddard. This was Chaplin's first film in 10 years, after 1957's A King in New York. mainland, but Ogden surprises Natascha in the hotel's cabaret where they begin dancing as he has left the ship and his wife. Ogden responds by asking if his wife would have done as well under such circumstances. Martha confronts Ogden about Natascha, speaking rather roughly about her and her past lifestyle as a prostitute and the mistress of a gangster, having learned her past from a passenger who was Natascha's customer in Hong Kong. Ogden's lawyer friend Harvey, who helped arrange the marriage, meets Natascha ashore and tells her that the immigration officers have accepted her as Hudson's wife, and she will remain in Honolulu. Ogden's wife Martha arrives in Honolulu to join the cruise, under advice from Washington that they avoid the impropriety of a divorce. She avoids him until they dock in Honolulu, then jumps off the ship and swims ashore.
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They must then figure out how to get her off the ship, and it is arranged that she marry Hudson, his middle-aged valet.Īlthough it is only a formality, Hudson wishes to consummate the relationship, a wish she does not share. But he reluctantly agrees to let her stay. Ogden dislikes the situation, being a married man although seeking a divorce, and he worries how it might affect his career if she is found. A refugee, she has no passport, and she is forced to hide in his cabin during the voyage.
At a layover in Hong Kong, Ogden meets Natascha – a Russian countess whose Shanghai Russian parents died after the family was expelled following the Russian Revolution – who then sneaks into his cabin in evening dress to escape her life as a prostitute at a sailors' dance hall. The film's theme song, " This Is My Song", written by Chaplin and performed by Petula Clark, became a worldwide success, topping the charts in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, the Netherlands and Belgium, while reaching number three in the United States and number four in Canada.Īmbassador-designate to Saudi Arabia Ogden Mears sails back to America after touring the world. Actor Jack Nicholson is also a big fan of the film. In addition, the success of the music score was able to cover the budget.Ĭritics such as Tim Hunter and Andrew Sarris, as well as poet John Betjeman and director François Truffaut, viewed the film as being among Chaplin's best works. However, it did prove to be extremely successful in Europe and Japan. This resulting film, created nearly 30 years after its inception, was a critical failure and grossed US$2 million from a US$3.5-million budget.
It was originally started as a film called Stowaway in the 1930s, planned for Paulette Goddard, but production was never completed. When the Second World War broke out many of the old aristocrats had died and the younger generation migrated to Hong Kong where their plight was even worse, for Hong Kong was overcrowded with refugees." The men ran rickshaws and the women worked in ten-cent dance halls. They were destitute and without a country their status was of the lowest grade. The idea, according to a press release written by Chaplin after the film received a negative reception, "resulted from a visit I made to Shanghai in 1931 where I came across a number of titled aristocrats who had escaped the Russian Revolution. She was a Russian singer and dancer who "was a stateless person marooned in France without a passport".
The story is based loosely on the life of a woman Chaplin met in France, named Moussia Sodskaya, or "Skaya", as he calls her in his 1922 book My Trip Abroad.