Chaplin the Lady Killer

CHARLIE CHAPLIN made life hard for all the other silent comedians. He matched them, laugh for laugh, with slapstick as clever and inventive as anyone's. He could string gags together, then top off the series with a clincher timed just right. So could all the other great comics--but Chaplin left all competitors far behind because on top of all the slapstick he was the most spirited and sympathetic character on the screen. His comedies affect me in an obscure way. I laugh, as at any good comedy, but then I feel a delicate warmth spreading all across me. During many of the funniest moments I don't laugh at all, just sit and smile the broadest smile I can imagine. No other artist is so lighthearted and yet so moving.

Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux is a sophisticated gentleman, quite unlike the character with the big feet and the penguin walk, but for the most part his face is as alive, his movement as adroit, his spirit every bit as poignant as that of the wonderful little tramp. Yet there is a savage distinction: Verdoux is a multiple bigamist and mass murderer. He marries rich women, murders them, quickly counts his money, expertly disposes of the bodies.

Leaping into the mind of such a confusing character is not an easy task for an actor, but, in this 1947 film, Chaplin delves beyond the paradoxes of the man's mind, using him as a vehicle for attacking the unpunished mass murderers--the governments of the world.

Chaplin builds no sympathy for Verdoux's crimes. The profits accruing from Verdoux's enterprises support a crippled wife and a small son, so, at first glance, the film appears to be an apology for the economic ruthlessness forced on Verdoux after he lost his job in the depression. But when he surprises his wife (Mady Correll) by telling her that he has been able to pay off their mortgage, she realizes that they were happier when they were poor. Cut off from the truth about her husband, she nevertheless recognizes the corrosive side effects of his work.

CHAPLIN'S performance itself is an extraordinary evocation of contradictory emotions. The murderer he plays is both compassionate and utterly despicable--not a split personality but both, simultaneously. The details which reveal Verdoux's character are not mere signposts, as in most films. Chaplin does not show us a man playing with a cat and then expect us to assume on that basis alone that the man has a redeeming facet. Instead, every detail--including the feeding of the cat, every vicious maneuver, every noble gesture, every sparkle in his eyes--contributes to the development of two sides of Verdoux which are present from the very first close-up.

But Chaplin is not trying to make the simpleminded and useless statement that even murderers have their good points. He is after something deeper, exploring the ambivalences of modern society. Verdoux deeply believes his acts are excusable, and we want to know why. The only time he allows himself to be swayed from his unhesitating ruthlessness is when he picks up a derelict girl (Marilyn Nash) in order to test a new poison and finds that she, like him, could "kill for love." When he discovers their similarity, she gains his respect. He removes her poisoned glass of wine with as skillful a subterfuge as he used to introduce it. After he is tried and convicted, he attacks his accusers in a powerful but restrained Victorian style.

Interviewed by the press, he says his mistake was in being too small an operator. "Crime does not pay in a small way," he says. "One murder makes a villain, millions a hero. Numbers sanctify."

"AS A MASS KILLER," Verdoux tells the court, "I am an amateur." but he is as evasive on the subject of his own guilt as he is correct about the guilt of others. His wife and son die before his arrest, and he never mentions them in his defense. In fact, he makes no defense at all. He prefers to attack.

Verdoux's self-righteous stand at the close of Monsieur Verdoux is probably one reason the film was so ill-received when it first appeared in 1947. The public was already upset with Chaplin because he was involved in a paternity suit and because he was accused of being a Communist. Audiences simply would not countenance what seemed to them a false show of morality. Verdoux was given favorable notice by only a handful of critics, and in two years of circulation it reached only about one-sixth as many theaters as the average grade B movie.

Monsieur Verdoux was seen as an immoral film simply because it dealt with an immoral man. What people could not understand is that everything in Monsieur Verdoux grows out of Chaplin's earlier, immensely popular comedies. In nearly all of them, he was concerned with the troubles of his time, and the concern he felt explains how his comedies could be so full of pathos even while they were funny. He felt a greater range of emotion than he needed for his slapstick roles, but deeper and deeper feeling gradually found its way into his work.

Between the great silent comedies and Monsieur Verdoux, Chaplin witnessed world depression and a world war. His old comedy had not kept pace with the workings of his mind: It was too full of hope, too innocent, too ignorant of all but a caricatured evil to express Chaplin's worries for mankind.

In Verdoux, he uses all the methods of his earlier films, but in presenting such a complex portrayal of a criminal he adds a new dimension. He places demands on the viewer and leaves him disturbed and uncertain about movements and expressions taken right out of the earlier films.

Monsieur Verdoux is Chaplin's last great film. With Limelight (1952), he descended into stiff, nostalgic melodrama. But in Verdoux Chaplin is still in his prime, questioning life in a way outside the scope of his earlier masterpieces, redirecting the passionate feelings which ennobled The Gold Rush, Modern Times, and City Lights.