Word: monsieurs
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Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux is a sophisticated gentleman, quite unlike the character with the big feet and the penguin walk, but for the most part his face is as alive, his movement as adroit, his spirit every bit as poignant as that of the wonderful little tramp. Yet there is a savage distinction: Verdoux is a multiple bigamist and mass murderer. He marries rich women, murders them, quickly counts his money, expertly disposes of the bodies...
Verdoux's self-righteous stand at the close of Monsieur Verdoux is probably one reason the film was so ill-received when it first appeared in 1947. The public was already upset with Chaplin because he was involved in a paternity suit and because he was accused of being a Communist. Audiences simply would not countenance what seemed to them a false show of morality. Verdoux was given favorable notice by only a handful of critics, and in two years of circulation it reached only about one-sixth as many theaters as the average grade B movie...
...Monsieur Verdoux was seen as an immoral film simply because it dealt with an immoral man. What people could not understand is that everything in Monsieur Verdoux grows out of Chaplin's earlier, immensely popular comedies. In nearly all of them, he was concerned with the troubles of his time, and the concern he felt explains how his comedies could be so full of pathos even while they were funny. He felt a greater range of emotion than he needed for his slapstick roles, but deeper and deeper feeling gradually found its way into his work...
...black comedy full of social comment, Monsieur Verdoux is not at all like the Chaplin's silent films. Don't expect to be doubled up in laughter...
...Monsieur Verdoux, in its New England premiere at the Harvard Square theater, is a "comedy for murderers" made in 1947 by Charlie Chaplin. It played in several cities this summer, but before this year it had had almost no exposure in the U.S. It came out when the witch hunts and blacklisting within the movie industry were just beginning, and Chaplin, a British citizen was one of the first people attacked...