Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

best movie i've ever seen.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It took me years to settle down, mature, and approach this film with a fresh eye. Those looking for the little fellow to knock about and make them howl with laughter, are approaching this gem from the wrong direction. I know, because that's what *I* have done. After several years of relishing Chaplin's work up through "Modern Times", I found this film, (and The Great Dictator), hard to approach. Decades had to go by, before I could have a screening, which was worthy of its genius. I PROPOSE AN EXPERIMENT: Can movie fans like me round up some new viewers, who know nothing of Chaplin, and get their take on this without the pre-loaded expectations of The Gentleman Tramp? Best bits for me come in all sequences with Martha Raye ("THE MOUTH"), and a profound sequence inside a flower shop, where Verdoux sweet-talks a woman over the telephone. Watch the reaction of the florist listening- in. The scene is sublime and devastating. his first murder is artfully portrayed by letting us watch the outdoors, through a window, across a stairway going up. The bedroom in which the crime occurs is off to the left. Brilliant economy and unforgettable story-telling.

. . . applies to the 143-second excerpt from the MONSIEUR VERDOUX (1947) feature film that the Criterion Company included on Disc 2 of its GREAT DICTATOR home entertainment release. This bit deals with a stock market crash, and Charlie Chaplin's character--Henri Verdoux--tells his broker, "Sell everything I have AT ONCE!" to which the latter replies, "Are you mad?! You were wiped out hours ago!" Then there's some newsreel footage of a couple World War Two Era dictators, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Among the initial details of the market crash shown here are newspaper headlines, such as this one from Le Figaro: "Stocks Crash: Panic Follows" and another from "L'Humanite: "Banks Fail; Riots Ensue." Then there's some footage of a mob of normal people breaking out the windows of a Fat Cat Bank, and a random Money Mogul about to shoot himself because, as the Holy Bible says, "The love of Money is the Root of All Evil." Another Venal Banker jumps out of a high-rise window. This excerpt ends with the Hitler\Mussolini collage, capped by a "Le Figaro" headline, "Nazis bomb Spanish Loyalists; Thousands of Civilians Killed."

"Monsieur Verdoux" is unlike any other Chaplin film that I have ever seen before for two reasons only, reason 1 the story is much different than Chaplin's stories to his other films for example The Kid (1921),and The Gold Rush (1925), reason 2 because Chaplin doesn't usually play villains in his movies and in this movie he does play the bad guy for the first time ever in his career and as a result he was deliberately snubbed for a best leading actor Oscar as well as an Oscar for best director but only got a screenplay nomination. The movie tells the story of a killer named Henri Verdoux (played by Charlie Chaplin) who murders women in order to support his wife and son (that is a true idea for Orson Welles to give to other filmmakers that were working around the time he started working in Hollywood), this movie is not only one of the best movies of 1947 it is one of Chaplin's best movies period alongside The Kid and the gold rush.

"Monsieur Verdoux"'s main significance is that it is the first movie in which Charlie Chaplin doesn't play his Tramp character. But another significance is that it's Chaplin's first movie that doesn't employ straightforward comedy (except for a few scenes). This black comedy casts Chaplin as a laid-off bank clerk who secretly marries multiple women at once and kills them for their money. At the end of the movie, he gives a speech similar to the one at the end of "The Great Dictator": he reminds his captors that he is only seen as a criminal because he committed a few murders, while those who commit millions of murders are seen as heroes.Around the time of the release, people were starting to view Chaplin with suspicion, due to the left-wing views espoused in his movies. Only a few years later, he got banned from reentering the United States. Moreover, Chaplin's character mentions Indochina in one scene, inadvertently hinting at the war in which the US would be mired twenty years after the movie's release. But all in all, Chaplin made a really good movie here, a perfect indictment of the class system, and still quite funny. Among the other cast members are Martha Raye as his brash wife (well, one of the wives), Marilyn Nash, and William Frawley (a few years away from being known as Fred Mertz).