Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42095 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-09-22
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Formats: Black & White, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 118 minutes

DVD Description
This blistering little black comedy was well ahead of its time when released in 1947. Originally, Orson Welles had wanted Chaplin to star in his drama about a French mass murderer named Landru, but Chaplin was hesitant to act for another director and used the idea himself. He plays a dapper gent named Henri Verdoux (who assumes a number of identities), a civilised monster who marries wealthy women, then murders them (as we meet him, he's gathering roses as an incinerator ominously bellows smoke in the background) and collects their money to support his real family. The Little Tramp is now a distant memory, though this was the first film not to feature Chaplin's beloved creation. Verdoux is largely viciously clever. Ultimately, Chaplin breaks character (much as he did in The Great Dictator) to preach to the masses, declaring that against the machines of war that grip the planet, humble killer Verdoux is "an amateur by comparison."

Special Features
Region 2

Synopsis
Subtitled a "Comedy of Murders," this film is about a middle-aged Bluebeard who murders wives for their money. An off-beat comedy which was ahead of its time but is now considered as a Chaplin favourite.

Customer Reviews

Look at how far we've come
This was the film that ultimately did Chaplin in, the one that made sure that he wasn't allowed back into the States, once he had left for a trip to England. 'Verdoux' is an elegant, slightly fuzzy, but well-meaning and well-scripted Bluebeard-comedy with Chaplin in the lead, killing off rich, middle-aged women that he marries, having lost all his money in the big crash of '29. "I am but an amateur when it comes to killing", he says, more or less, in his defense, implying very overtly that the big warfaring nations are the true killers. It is sad how little the world changes, if the Americans got a second chance to get back at Chaplin here and now, they would, with a vengeance. Chaplin thought patriotism was sheer stupidity, and look where we are now. Buy this film, it has historical and artistic significance, the transfer is excellent, and the DVD is crammed with enlightening extras.

Chaplin at his best.
In my opinion this is the very best film Chaplin ever made, I love his early silent film work and the Great Dictator is a very important, well made and influential film. However for me this film is the best of the best. It is both funny and dark, Chaplin was a genious before his time, America viewed him as a great threat because he gave an alternative view of society through this movie, and the message in this 50 year old movie is just as applicable today. Men like George Bush and Tony Blair have contributed to the deaths of thousands (hundreds of thousands) of people throught their actions and decisions yet they face no trial. In Chaplins words... One death makes a vilan millions a hero, numbers sanctify. Charlie Chaplin gave a very strong and valid message in this film and I believe he was very brave to do so.

A master at his very best, a fantastic film.

Monsieur Verdoux
"Monsieur Verdoux", is Charlie Chaplin's darkest hour. Ostensibly set in France in the 1930s, "Monsieur Verdoux" critiques capitalist society, where corruption and murder are endemic. Chaplin plays Verdoux, a family man whose impecuniousity drives him to mass murder.

The film was made at the nadir of his popularity in America. His reputation had been sullied by a far from equitable paternity suit, and because of his leftist political views, this and other scandals were used by the American Government to create a smear campaign. It is no surprise then, that this film is the most cynical, ironic film in his long career.

Verdoux is the most complex, paradoxical character you'll ever see in a Chaplin film. The beautiful, warm sentiments of the tramp have been supplanted by a cold, calculated attitude towards life. For Verdoux, murder is a business enterprise, or to use Chaplin's own words, "a logical extension of business". Yet, despite this we have the dichotomy of a man who murders for business contrasted with a man who loves his disabled wife and children. Chaplin himself described him as a "paradox of vice and virtue". His political bent informs this paradox. In capitalist society he is greedy, opportunistic and murderous, but out in the countryside with his wife he is tender and caring. I suppose you could say he is a Jekyll and Hyde-type character whose personality is subject to the environment he finds himself in. This could also be a reference to big businessmen who in seeking aggrandisement for themselves and their family will stop at nothing.

Of course, this being the most subversive film in the career of Charlie Chaplin, and being made at a time when his popularity with the American public was waning, it's unsurprising that the film garnered a lot of criticism. For one, the film was seen by many fans, critics and politicians to be an affront to their morality, which should give some impression of just how much this diverges from the usual Chaplin fare. There is also the criticism that Chaplin seems to be preaching at people despite his own moral problems.

Yet none of us truly know Charlie Chaplin the man, so this particular review isn't going to degenerate into calumny. I prefer to believe in the noble sentiments that render his films so poignant and artistically significant.

I think the most memorable scene in the film for me is the speech Verdoux gives at the end of his trial. In this speech, Verdoux condemns the capitalist ethos, hypocrisy and the jingoism that leads some Rulers and citizens of nations to delude themselves that their murderous actions are more righteous than others. He refers in veiled terms to America's use of nuclear weapons, still the only country, in attacking Japan. This perhaps give some indication of the disillusionment Chaplin must have felt with the country he was making films in at the time. Yet its a particularly acute perception considering the enormity of that particular monstrosity, especially profound considering the acute amnesia American patriots obviously suffer from.

Highly recommended