A minor picture with curiosity value: Charlie Chaplin’s final film as a director, starring Brando and Sophia Loren, a comedy in the style of the Hollywood Golden Age, based on the tall tales of a real-life Russian singer and in fact originally conceived by Chaplin in the 30s for Paulette Goddard. Brando plays an American diplomat who is astonished to find that the Russian countess he was charmed by in Hong Kong has stowed away in his cabin on the voyage home.
He plays Col Kurtz, the brilliant and once exemplary US army officer who must be tracked down during the Vietnam war, having gone mad in the Cambodian jungle and established his own cult where he is worshipped as a pagan god. Brando’s head looms out of the darkness like an angry planet or a giant carved fetish; just his face, and those staring eyes, are enough to compel the viewer.