MONSIEUR VERDOUX
Rating: *** ½ (out of ****)
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Martha Raye, Isobel Elsom, Marilyn Nash
Writer: Charles Chaplin
Director: Charles Chaplin
Playing Friday (7:00) and Sunday (3:00) at Cinematheque Ontario

“Chaplin Changes – CAN YOU?” asked the ads for Charlie Chaplin’s 1947 black comedy, Monsieur Verdoux. Monsieur Verdoux was the first time since 1914 that Chaplin did not play his famous Little Tramp (or a variation on that character). The film also marked a turning point in his career and popularity. Already reeling from allegations of Communism and an ugly paternity lawsuit, the man who was once the most famous and beloved single person in the entire world was seen as a lecher and a radical. Monsieur Verdoux only alienated his public further, and apart from 1923’s A Woman of Paris (a melodrama that he directed but did not star in), it became his first box office flop.

The story (“Based on an Idea by Orson Welles”) struck an unpleasant chord. Chaplin plays Henri Verdoux, a dapper French banker who loses his job during the Great Depression. Unable to find employment and with a family to feed, Verdoux embarks on a career of marrying wealthy old women and murdering them for their money. In one of the film’s early scenes, Verdoux is on his latest honeymoon. Wandering through his garden, Verdoux saves a caterpillar from getting squished. Seconds later, a neighbour observes, “He’s had that incinerator going all day.” Guess who’s in the incinerator.

In this scene and others, Chaplin contrasts Verdoux’s charm with his inhuman crimes, which Verdoux views with a startling indifference. Disturbingly, Chaplin the director, while hardly glamorizing the murders, does not go out of his way to demonize Verdoux. Rather, Chaplin turns Verdoux from a cold-blooded killer into a sympathetic antihero. In 1947, this was unheard of.

Turning Verdoux into the protagonist isn’t just a sick joke for Chaplin. As in most of his later films, the plot of Monsieur Verdoux is the launching pad for Chaplin’s political agenda. After Verdoux is finally arrested, Chaplin draws parallels between Verdoux’s killings with the killing brought about by war. “One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero,” says Verdoux at his trial. “As a mass killer, I am an amateur.” How many people would have dared say this in a film two years after World War II?

For a long time, I, like the public, was unable to fully appreciate Monsieur Verdoux. I expected something with a greater laugh-to-minute ratio from Chaplin. Verdoux has funny moments, sure – the scenes in which Chaplin tries to kill the boorish and downright invincible Martha Raye are as funny as anything Chaplin had ever done before. But the laugh quotient is lower than in certified Chaplin classics like The Gold Rush or City Lights. Instead, Chaplin spends ample time on drama, political philosophy, and even suspense.

Though I was critical of the film, I was also fascinated, and over the years I’ve probably seen Monsieur Verdoux more times than nearly any other Chaplin film. Looking back, I think my earlier objections have little merit. Who says Chaplin need focus on humour? In fact, the combination of humour drama, philosophy, and suspense make for a well balanced and ultimately satisfying experience. Did I just say suspense in a Chaplin movie? Chaplin has often been criticized as being a pedestrian director, but watch the scene leading up to the off-screen murder of Lydia (Margaret Hoffman): it’s comparable to Hitchcock.

Chaplin’s previous film, the no less controversial Hitler satire The Great Dictator (1940), had moments of bleakness and misery, but its concluding scene – Chaplin’s infamous six-minute speech – was a hopeful one that believed in the goodness of humanity. Verdoux is a darker and more nihilistic film. Monsieur Verdoux falls short of greatness. Parts of it have not aged well: the drama has a tendency to go sappy and Chaplin’s moralizing isn’t exactly subtle, especially in the film’s concluding scenes. Yet many aspects of the film (its pacifism, the jet-black comedy, Chaplin’s magnetic performance) are startlingly effective. If it isn’t as miraculous as The Gold Rush, City Lights, or Modern Times, Monsieur Verdoux still emerges as one of Chaplin’s most ambitious and stimulating works.