I suppose the only thing one has any right to expect from a Chaplin movie is the unexpected. If that's what you're looking for, Monsieur Verdoux won't disappoint you.
Still, I have to confess that it disappointed me. There is none of the genius that makes his previous movie, The Great Dictator, one of the marvels of movie history. Most of this is just the mildly amusing story of a man who loses his job in a bank and so, to support his invalid wife and child, marries a series of foolish wealthy women and then kills them off for their money. It never considers the question of whether those marriages are consummated or not, whether he is therefore being physically unfaithful to his invalid wife, etc. In one scene we learn that he sleeps in the same room with one of his wealthy conquests, but that's it.
Near the end, the political world starts to intrude more and more into this otherwise anodyne story, usually through newspaper headlines. We see that Europe is arming for another world war, that the Fascists kill innocent women and children in Spain, etc., while the plot meanders on.
Then, finally, when the police start to catch up with Verdoux, he begins to give speeches about the mass killings in Europe, as if out of the blue. He suddenly has the voice we heard in The Great Dictator, but this time it comes out of nowhere, and it seems much less convincing. Is this really why Chaplin told a story of a man who poisoned wealthy widows, as a way of condemning European armament? In 1940's The Great Dictator such words had the terrible sound of foreboding prophesy. Several years after the war (1947), with no new war criminals portrayed after Hitler and Mussolini, this seems, basically, old news.
I recognize Chaplin's genius, and wish I could talk about examples of it in his movie, but I really didn't see any. More's the shame.
Still, I have to confess that it disappointed me. There is none of the genius that makes his previous movie, The Great Dictator, one of the marvels of movie history. Most of this is just the mildly amusing story of a man who loses his job in a bank and so, to support his invalid wife and child, marries a series of foolish wealthy women and then kills them off for their money. It never considers the question of whether those marriages are consummated or not, whether he is therefore being physically unfaithful to his invalid wife, etc. In one scene we learn that he sleeps in the same room with one of his wealthy conquests, but that's it.
Near the end, the political world starts to intrude more and more into this otherwise anodyne story, usually through newspaper headlines. We see that Europe is arming for another world war, that the Fascists kill innocent women and children in Spain, etc., while the plot meanders on.
Then, finally, when the police start to catch up with Verdoux, he begins to give speeches about the mass killings in Europe, as if out of the blue. He suddenly has the voice we heard in The Great Dictator, but this time it comes out of nowhere, and it seems much less convincing. Is this really why Chaplin told a story of a man who poisoned wealthy widows, as a way of condemning European armament? In 1940's The Great Dictator such words had the terrible sound of foreboding prophesy. Several years after the war (1947), with no new war criminals portrayed after Hitler and Mussolini, this seems, basically, old news.
I recognize Chaplin's genius, and wish I could talk about examples of it in his movie, but I really didn't see any. More's the shame.