Monsieur Verdoux: A Comedy of Murders

Wednesday, July 19 at 7:30 PM — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the door

MONSIEUR VERDOUX: A COMEDY OF MURDERS
Directed by Charles Chaplin • 1947
When Monsieur Verdoux opened in 1947, United Artists did just about the only thing it could do to sell a dark comedy about bigamy, homicide, and the relentless logic of industrial efficiency: it put the onus on the audience. “Chaplin Changes! Can You?” proclaimed the posters, as if to dare fans of the Little Tramp to grow up and appreciate the man behind the mustache for who he really was—a garrulous continental philosopher whose work mixed cynicism and sentiment into one sharp potion. (Name another ‘40s comedy that offers up Arthur Schopenhauer as a punchline—and actually earns a chuckle in the process.) Chaplin stars as Henri Verdoux, a career bank clerk in Paris who must find increasingly creative ways to keep his son and invalid wife in their provincial chateau. He takes to marrying and murdering wealthy widows (including the unsinkable Martha Raye), emerging as a morally flexible, middle-aged Casanova with a passion for poison. The film predictably ran into resistance from every corner—a press suspicious of Chaplin’s private proclivities and political sympathies, a Catholic Church eager to picket theaters showing degenerate films, even a real-life bank clerk also named Henri Verdoux, inadvertently defamed by the satire. Yet the acid moral of Chaplin’s film has outlasted his critics, underlying a comedy that remains as funny as a punch in the gut: “Wars, conflict — it’s all business. One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero. Numbers sanctify.” (KW)
124 min • United Artists • 35mm from the Film Desk

Preceded by: “Born to Peck” (Walter Lantz, 1952) – 7 min – 35mm