Word: verdoux
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...Monsieur Verdoux (United Artists), Charles Spencer Chaplin's first film since The Great Dictator (1940), is the story of a middle-aged French bank clerk who loses his job during a depression. Tenderly devoted to his invalid wife, his little boy, and their security, and disastrously ill-equipped to fend for them in a prolapsed economy, he nevertheless manages to set up in business for himself. The business: murder...
Like many a man who drives a ruthless bargain, M. Verdoux has his good side. He exhibits an exquisite gentleness toward children, the sick and the maimed, and even the humblest animals. He spares one prospective victim (a new Chaplin protege named Marilyn Nash), when he learns that she is the widow of a disabled war veteran and shares his burning pity for the helpless. He fails to close his deals with certain other clients too. He makes several brilliantly funny attempts on the life of rambunctious Martha Raye, but she was born lucky and is plainly indestructible. He nibbles...
...Numbers Sanctify." Chaplin has remarked that Verdoux paraphrases Clausewitz' idea that the logical extension of diplomacy is war. Verdoux's version: "The logical extension of business is murder." War, he tells the court which condemns him, is merely a grandiose multiplication of the crime he is dying for. But wholesale murder is condoned by the state. "Numbers . . ." (of killed men), he tells the fat-mouthed journalist who interviews him in his death cell, "numbers sanctify." An earnest priest, his last offices rejected, murmurs solemnly, "May God have mercy on your soul." "Why not?" replies M. Verdoux. "After...
Charles Spencer Chaplin gave the public a preview peek at himself in what looked like the nattiest role of his career (see cut). His long-planned comedy about a Bluebeardish M. Verdoux who marries and murders for money (leading lady: Martha Raye) would finally be out in March, and Producer-Actor Chaplin was moved to a program note: "Von Clausewitz said that war is the logical extension of diplomacy; M. Verdoux feels that murder is the logical extension of business." Bessie Love, sweet-faced young thing of the silents, complained that her ex-husband, Producer William B. Hawks, had fallen...