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Just what I expected

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

France, early 1930s. After working for 30 years at a bank, Henri Verdoux is laid off. The world is in the middle of a depression and work is hard to find. To support his wife and child, Verdoux takes to a life of crime - marrying rich women, murdering them and taking their money. After a while the police start to piece the puzzle together...A dark comedy-drama from the great Charlie Chaplin. Not a laugh-a- minute, unlike his best works, and a bit uneven. The first hour is quite dry and contains very few laughs. In addition, the drama is slow- paced and the movie doesn't seem headed for much. However, things pick up considerably in the second half with some hilarious scenes and some interesting dramatic themes developing.The main reason for the better second half is the performance of comedienne Martha Raye, who plays one of his wives. Wonderfully over the top, she provides most of the best comedic moments and breathes life into what was otherwise a fairly stuffy, play-like affair.

. . . applies to the 143-second excerpt from the MONSIEUR VERDOUX (1947) feature film that the Criterion Company included on Disc 2 of its GREAT DICTATOR home entertainment release. This bit deals with a stock market crash, and Charlie Chaplin's character--Henri Verdoux--tells his broker, "Sell everything I have AT ONCE!" to which the latter replies, "Are you mad?! You were wiped out hours ago!" Then there's some newsreel footage of a couple World War Two Era dictators, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Among the initial details of the market crash shown here are newspaper headlines, such as this one from Le Figaro: "Stocks Crash: Panic Follows" and another from "L'Humanite: "Banks Fail; Riots Ensue." Then there's some footage of a mob of normal people breaking out the windows of a Fat Cat Bank, and a random Money Mogul about to shoot himself because, as the Holy Bible says, "The love of Money is the Root of All Evil." Another Venal Banker jumps out of a high-rise window. This excerpt ends with the Hitler\Mussolini collage, capped by a "Le Figaro" headline, "Nazis bomb Spanish Loyalists; Thousands of Civilians Killed."

As Charlie Chaplin put it when the tramp finally talked in The Great Dictator the magic was gone. Chaplin felt he had to come up with another character in order to continue his career and he got away from the lovable Little Tramp as far as he could with Monsieur Verdoux.A whole lot of people were shocked when Monsieur Verdoux came out and instead of the Tramp we got a Bluebeard murderer. Black comedy was not a genre popular in the USA at that time and a lot of people hated this film. None more so than Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper who as a good conservative Republican cheered on the coming blacklist and beat the drums for Chaplin's deportation. No accident that Chaplin was hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee at the time Monsieur Verdoux came out.Based on the famous French mass criminal Henry Desire Landru, Monsieur Verdoux tells the story of a bank clerk who lost his job and to support his family started marrying and murdering rich women. Verdoux keeps quite a schedule because he's marrying several of them at the same time. But always returns to wife Mady Correll and son Allison Roddan.Funniest marriage is to Martha Raye who not only is he unsuccessful in killing, she nearly does him in on a couple of occasions strictly by accident. That raucous laugh might elicit sympathy from a jury if anyone ever heard it and was condemned to live with it even part time.With the marriage to Raye comes the film's funniest sequence Chaplin trying to kill Raye when they were in a boat on a lake in Switzerland. It will not escape your attention that the sequence is borrowed from Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy which was already filmed in 1931 and would shortly be filmed again in 1951 as A Place In The Sun. Ironic indeed how the same plot gambits can be played for laughs or deadly serious.Second funniest is Raye showing up at Chaplin's wedding to Isobel Elsom whom he has targeted. It forces him to leave her at the altar not knowing at that time how lucky she was.Truth be told some of Chaplin's left wing political views are grafted into the film somewhat forcibly. It's what got Hedda Hopper's undergarments in such a twist. Still this an amusing film and not fairly judged by a lot of people at the time it came out.

A satire on a serial killer is not your everyday movie fare. I can see why audiences of that day were turned off by the Little Tramp's sudden homicidal turn. Of course, it's all treated with a light comedic hand until the moralizing end. Still, Chaplin's subtext comes through clearly at certain points-, such that unemployment can drive men to extremes when they've got a family to support. On the other hand, not every man, of course, turns to fleecing rich widows and then dispatching them in cold-blooded fashion. But that brings him to his second point--- namely "numbers sanctify". Kill one person and you're a murderer; kill a thousand and you're a hero. Here it appears he's referring to the state that historically kills by the thousands in the name of the patriotism. Remember, the movie's coming right after the close of the horrific WWII, and he finds the point ironic.But Verdoux's not through. Capitalism is indirectly indicted for its periodic booms and busts that lead to joblessness, and millions upon millions for munitions manufacturers who prosper during wartime. As for the consolations of religion that come at the end, the gentleman killer appears indifferent without being insulting. Since Chaplin's the sole screenwriter, it's no stretch to believe he's speaking for himself on these matters. Given this rather wholesale indictment of many of the West's leading institutions, small wonder he left the country shortly after under a cloud of controversy.Nonetheless, the movie hits its comedic highpoints with Martha Raye as the loudly vulgar Annabella. Try as he does to do her in, she manages to comically thwart him at every turn. That scene in the fishing boat's a classic. All his polished charm and oily flattery just slide by her obnoxious silliness. Raye makes a perfect foil and an inspired piece of casting.Of course, some of the beguiling Little Tramp remains in Verdoux's character, as when he befriends the penniless girl (Nash), or in that supremely ironic moment when he ambles Tramp-style toward the guillotine. All in all, it's a strange little movie that was apparently shelved for years for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, it was rather gutsy for Chaplin to take such chances with his established character and at Cold War's outset. It's fairly humorous until you think about its serious points, which are still worth pondering.