296 - Monsieur Verdoux, United States, 1947. Dir. Charles Chaplin.

Monday, October 23, 2017

296 - Monsieur Verdoux, United States, 1947.  Dir. Charles Chaplin.

Before the Coen Brothers made famous use of a wood chipper in their 1996 masterpiece Fargo, they made use of an incinerator in their 1984 debut Blood Simple.

And before the Coen Brothers used an incinerator in Blood Simple, Charlie Chaplin used an incinerator in his 1947 talkie Monsieur Verdoux.

An incinerator.  Oooh. . . . What is producing that black smoke?

If you have only seen Charlie Chaplin as The Little Tramp in silent films, then this film will be a revelation for you.  And potentially a delightful one.

Chaplin plays a character, a regular person.  He speaks.  He walks.  He behaves.  Like real people really do.  He is not a clown.

As you watch you wish he had made more talking pictures, and you wish he had allowed others to write for him and direct him as well.

From the beginning, when Orson Welles' name is evoked below Charles Chaplin's, as the originator of the story, the viewer is entranced.  Really?  Charlie Chaplin made a movie from an Orson Welles story idea?  How exciting!  And one can imagine the dramatic possibilities from the Orson Welles idea.

As the film progresses, however, one wishes Welles had directed the film.  Chaplin remains one of the great physical comedians of all time, and his acting in Monsieur Verdoux is solid.  But he is not a highly technical director.  The film wanders a bit.  And one can see missed opportunities.  The viewer can only imagine what Welles' use of lighting, camera angles, and editing would have done for the dramatic tension of this film.  Nevertheless, we are still in the hands of one of the greats.

The film begins as a cheerful crime drama, told through the words of the dead narrator.  As Sunset Blvd. would do three years later.  As American Beauty would do four decades later.  And we are told from the beginning what his profession will be.  The former banker who lost his job in the great stock market crash has entered a new profession.  He seduces women to marry them, murder them, and take their money.  And he is doing well for himself in the midst of the Great Depression.  It is only business, after all, and Verdoux is good at it.  This is Chaplin at his most bitingly satirical.

The film opens with a chamber drama, and it focuses on the petty arguments of a family so annoyingly quarrelsome that the viewer is immediately prepared to take sides with Verdoux over their newly missing sister.

The family travels to France to seek help from the authorities, and in their stupidity they have even burned their only picture featuring their brother-in-law's appearance.  No problem, they claim.  They will know him when they see him.  Foreshadowing.

Meanwhile, Verdoux is already at work removing the evidence of his last job, their sister, and making arrangements to sell the house and clear out.  When his next potential buyer arrives, he attempts to make her his next subject, and she will play prominently later on.

Verdoux is a fascinating character.  He seems genuinely to love his wife and son and motivated to provide for them.  He is cultured, with a head for business and chemistry and a heart for moonrises and poetry.  He is able to sweep women off their feet, and he is able to manage multiple marriages in multiple cities.

We watch as he pursues them. 

And we see how his heart is affected when he picks up a homeless girl, recently released from jail, and overplays his hand, causing her to believe he is a man of great kindness and goodness.

The narrative goes at a decent clip but occasionally gets bogged down with meandering plotlines and distracted political philosophy.

The less you know about the latter, the more you will enjoy the film.

The more you know about the latter, both in the message of the film and in the contemporaneous personal and political affairs of its filmmaker, the less enthusiastic you will be.

Crime dramas, capers, thrillers, and films noir tend to work best as self-contained stories, with the focus on the moral quandaries of the specific individuals involved.  They are less effective as grand social statements.

Yes, this film is also a social satire, but good luck making a womanizing serial killer the moral voice against an entire society that has just worked its way out of a great depression, restored hope, and fought and defeated one of the greatest evils the world has ever known, all in the name of some muddled abstract theory.

The girl he once helped has returned in the end and has offered to help him in return.

He should have accepted her offer.