Monsieur Verdoux

Charlie Chaplin plays anything but a tramp in "Monsieur Verdoux." The story (the idea for which is credited to Orson Welles) involves a French bank clerk who, after being laid off at the onset of the Great Depression, murders an array of old dames that he courts in order for his beloved family to live in modest comfort. While we may not spend much time with his wife and son, the implication that they are a happy, normal family--an enlightened one, perhaps, as they are vegetarians (couldn't have been too common in nineteen-thirties France)--is clear.

Verdoux can kill because he's an incredible cynic, or, rather, he's become one after having watched the world dissolve around him; his pragmatism, after all, is forged out of a traditionalist's notion of love. One almost wants to see a bit more tenderness--when his family dies off-screen, Chaplin misses an extraordinary opportunity to exhibit what must have been a crucial moment for his character--but one also appreciates the black comedy and the snippets of slapstick that Chaplin was still able to pull off (he was 58 at the time).

There's a wild farcicality in the tone; but the wry deadpan of our proto-Hannibal Lecter hero never undercuts the notion that murder is bad. The ambiguity is rich and textured and doesn't really go overboard because of its slick Old Hollywood shell. The movie is flawed--Chaplin gets a little too preachy at the end and his rendering of France is not particularly believable--but "Monsieur Verdoux" hasn't lost its edge.