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I'll grant that Agee's essay on VERDOUX is a classic, but I'm not sure the film itself has been rehabilitated. It has its admirers, some quite passionate and articulate, but still it seems regarded as a relatively undistinguished work in the Chaplin canon. (For my part, I would give VERDOUX the distinction of being the only Chaplin film to liberate itself from the conventions of music-hall comedy.) The Brechtian awkwardness, the blending of disparate genres and the direct address to the audience may not be so groundbreaking, either, since all of these elements are present in Chaplin's films from CITY LIGHTS onward, most notably (and jarringly) in THE GREAT DICTATOR. And the tradition of confrontational social-protest filmmaking can be traced at least as far back as Griffith's INTOLERANCE.
