Released seven years after
Chaplin’s last film The Great Dictator,
Monsieur Verdoux arrived after yet
another turbulent period in the actor/writer/director’s life. Based on an idea
by Orson Welles which Chaplin bought from his friend for $5,000 in 1941, the
film is loosely based on the life of a famous French bigamist and murderer
called Henri Landru. Here Charlie Chaplin plays Henri Verdoux, who after losing
his steady job during the Great Depression, marries several wealthy old women before
murdering them and stealing from their estates. Chaplin plays Verdoux as a
dapper and cunning gentleman. Charming and flirtatious he is an expert salesman
- his product, himself. Cleverly he woos unsuspecting women, keeping several on
the go at once and when money becomes tight he strikes. Speaking accurately
about his work to a neighbour he declares, “Yes I have a job. If I lose one, I
can always get another”. It’s this kind of pitch black humour that runs through
Chaplin’s darkest film and the same humour that drew mass criticism from
journalists and the public alike.
Stepping back in time for just a
moment to understand where Chaplin found himself in 1947 it’s not difficult to
see why he was given such a hard time in the press. Following several highly
public failed marriages, often with women several decades younger than himself,
Chaplin found himself in 1943 at the centre of the biggest celebrity scandal
since the Arbuckle trials over twenty years earlier. An inspiring actress who
Chaplin had privately tutored called Joan Barry had publicly declared the star
to be the father of her new born child and a paternity case was played out in
the full glare of the media that same year. Although two blood tests proved
Chaplin was not the father, the court still ordered him to pay child support
and the media backlash was something that Chaplin never really recovered from.
Added to this was Chaplin’s refusal to become an American citizen after over
thirty years of working in America
and suspicions of Communist sympathies in an ever more paranoid and right wing
country. So when in 1947 Chaplin released a film that not only did away with
his popular Tramp character but also appeared to glamorise murder and polygamy,
the knives were out.
