My wife and I watched many of the master's films 30-some years ago at a (now long-gone) repertory film house in San Francisco's Chinatown. "Monsieur Verdoux" is our favorite, right up there with "Modern Times." It is brilliant, and troubling. Chaplin acting in a speaking film is almost a completely different person from the portrayer of the Little Tramp, but equally affecting. The scene in which he relents at the last possible moment from killing the young woman is almost unbearable to watch. This is a wonderful film.

...back in the '80s in sleepy li'l Lansing Michigan, at an art venue called The Odeon.

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.

Nice article.

Although attributed to Chaplin, I believe the quip above originally came from Hanns Eisler, whose influence permeates Monsieur Verdoux both formally and politically. From what I've read, Chaplin didn't particularly "get" Brecht, although the two men liked each other well enough. Eisler was the common link, and the key to Chaplin's turn from a broad-strokes socialism to the more sharply honed critique presented in this film. Brecht's journals from his LA emigre period an interesting outsider's view on Monsieur Verdoux, and were what first compelled me to want to see this dark, wonderful, queer, and mostly overlooked film.

Even as someone who loves both Brecht and Chaplin, I had a hard time knowing what to make of Monsieur Verdoux on first, and second, and third viewing. I think that's what I like so much about it. This is not an easy film to like. I still don't know if I can say that it's "good." It's undeniably funny, and compelling. Just when it seems like the sentimentality and the style of the film will crush it under its own weighty self-importance, Chaplin falls down and the film lifts as the tension breaks.

Monsieur Verdoux takes as its premise the idea that an economy based metaphorically on "making a killing" will, eventually, lead people to literally enact "killing" in order to meet their economic needs. As outrageous as that sounds on first hearing, the Gilded Age of Halliburton give the film new resonance. You don't have to be a Marxist to recognize that "good people" will "sell out" in a million different ways to pay the bills. As Mr. O'Hehir observes, the power of Monsieur Verdoux lies in its ability to disturb us. It's impossible not to see ourselves in the murderer, at least to some extent. No one can claim "innocence" in a country where children lack access to health care, where 1 in 100 people are imprisoned, where our government wages reckless war on the cheap, all while the richest few consolidate their wealth and power unchecked.

When I saw it, oh 20 some years ago, expecting a Chaplin classic, it was so far away from that, from the Chaplin cannon, that I was disappointed, until, at the end, I realized I was crying, in a deep way, and I realized it was indeed the capstone of the cannon. It always struck me as the ultimate and complex expression of the extraordinarily deep sadness that underlies all the best clowns.

I didn't find the funny bits as funny as all that, the sadness seeped up into everything, ultimately drowning it.

The thing I took away from the theatre afterwards, was the fundamental and indestructible reality of human dignity that all clowning is really, in a very odd way, telling us about.

Not a funny movie at all.

Chaplin was a very Great Man.

The accusation that Chaplin was preying on "white girls" came from Mississippi congressman John Rankin, a notorious racist (he opposed the GI Bill because it gave benefits to black veterans) and anti-Semite (he cited the Jewish birth names of Hollywood liberals like Edward G. Robinson (Emmanuel Goldenberg), Melvin Douglas (Melvyn Hesselberg)as prima facie proof of their being communist). In his mind, Jews were not white. This accusation is premised on the widely-held but wrong belief that Chaplin was Jewish. (J. Hoberman discusses this belief in "Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting".) Chaplin was very classy about this misconception; he would never deny it, feeling that to do so would indicate there was something shameful about being Jewish, and when pressed for a direct answer would simply say "I have not had the privilege."

Appreciate the thoughtful responses, thanks.

timothy, I think thisniss and I are very much on the same wavelength here -- Verdoux is an easy film not to like, probably easier than any other of his features (not counting Countess From Hong Kong, I guess) but it feels more defiant, prickly and dangerous than the other, admittedly great films you cite. I will grant that the "Brechtian" stuff had built up in CC's work, that's an excellent point. And I'm simply building a case for Verdoux here, not arguing that it's his greatest or most must-see or anything.

thisniss, what a terrific summary. I'm absolutely unsure whether I "liked" Verdoux or whether I think it's "good." He's challenging you to not like the movie and the character and the actor-director by extension, isn't he? That's really why I brought up Spike Lee's Bamboozled and von Trier's Dancer in the Dark. Not, before God, to argue that they are Chaplin's equals, but because, whatever we may make of them personally, those movies are intentionally designed to be disliked by many viewers. (Uh oh, I feel a thinkpiece coming on.) When I was writing this, I went back and read some of the enraged reviews of Dancer, including some by people I know and like. On one level, fine, they hated it. Fair game. But also, if they were that pissed off by it, I would say the film accomplished what it set out to, no?

That said, I suppose that with Verdoux, Chaplin did not set out to lose lots of money, be demonized as a Commie pervert and driven out of the country. At least not consciously.