Monsieur Verdoux

Starring:Irving Bacon, Marjorie Bennett, Audrey Betz, Virginia Brissac, Charles Chaplin, Mady Correll, Isobel Elsom, Charles Evans (IV), William Frawley, Helene Heigh, Margaret Hoffman, Robert Lewis, Ada May, Edwin Mills, Eula Morgan, Marilyn Nash, Bernard Nedell, Martha Raye, Allison Roddan, Almira Sessions
Director: Charles Chaplin
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video
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 civilized 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 until it gets too heavy-handed, as evidenced when a woman he spares returns years later as the mistress of a munitions manufacturer. 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." --David Kronke
Description
Charles Chaplin turns his traditionally sunny sensibilities inside out with this sublime black comedy about a family man who secretly uses murder to support his beloved invalid wife and child. There's little of the immortal Tramp in Verdoux, yet the fastidious dandy is not lacking in comic graces. Most hilarious of all are the always-foiled attempts to dispatch the raucous Annabella (Martha Raye). When this most atypical Chaplin film opened, the world was not ready to look death in the face and walk away smiling. Today, Monsieur Verdoux ranks among Chaplin's best works. It is killer comedy.

The Chaplin Collection, Vol. 2 (City Lights / The Circus / The Kid / A King in New York / A Woman of Paris / Monsieur Verdoux / The Chaplin Revue / Charlie - The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin)
Average customer rating:

Don't expect the box to last...

Superb and very entertaining

The true comedy collection

Films to Enjoy

Very good, with few complaints

The Chaplin Collection, Vol. 2 (City Lights / The Circus / The Kid / A King in New York / A Woman of Paris / Monsieur Verdoux / The Chaplin Revue / Charlie - The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin)
Starring: Charles Chaplin , and Charlie Chaplin
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00017LVRI
Release Date: 2004-03-09

Amazon.com

The second magnificent collection of Charlie Chaplin's work is even more stuffed with goodies than the first: six feature films, a round-up of two-reelers, and a new documentary, plus a cornucopia of deleted scenes and context. Each feature is accompanied by a half-hour "Chaplin Today" featurette, in which a filmmaker comments from a 21st-century perspective. Claude Chabrol extols the wicked virtues of Monsieur Verdoux and calls Chaplin "a thoroughly modern director," while Jim Jarmusch speaks gallantly on the political satire of the problematic A King in New York.

The Kid (1921), Chaplin's first feature, relates directly to Chaplin's own hard upbringing. The Tramp adopts a street kid (Jackie Coogan), in a seamless blend of slapstick and sentiment. For A Woman of Paris (1923), Chaplin experimented: straight, adult melodrama, with no Charlie onscreen (save for a brief cameo). 1927's The Circus is prized by many Chaplin critics as pure sublime comedy, less burdened by sentiment or politics than subsequent films. City Lights (1931) is an undisputed masterpiece; the Tramp befriends a blind girl, leading to one of the great bittersweet endings in film history. (Among the extras: a priceless seven-minute deleted scene involving little more than Chaplin and a piece of wood stuck in a grate.) With Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Chaplin turned his back on the Tramp and invented an elegant lady killer (literally); audiences disapproved, but the film stands as a fascinating essay on himself. Finally, after his exile from the United States, Chaplin made A King in New York (1957), which is mostly flat, except as autobiography.

The Chaplin Revue gathers six essential short works, from the superb A Dog's Life (1918) to his last two-reeler, The Pilgrim. A separate disc contains film critic Richard Schickel's comprehensive documentary Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin, which does nicely by Chaplin's life and his working process, with keen comments from admirers such as Woody Allen and Johnny Depp. This box set is more than film history; it's a living treasure. --Robert Horton

Description

The wonder. The magic. The genius. Now for an encore presentation with stunning new restorations, all-new special features and more. The Richard Schickel documentary, "Charlie" available exclusively in this Chaplin Giftset. THE CIRCUS The Little Tramp accidentally becomes a big-top star in the comedy that earned Chaplin a special Academy Award?. CITY LIGHTS A forever classic - and an American Film Institute Top-100 Movie. The Tramp becomes a working man, saving money for an operation that will restore a blind flower girl's sight. THE KID The Tramp and his ragamuffin sidekick (6-year-old Jackie Coogan) triumph over life's hard knocks in the landmark film that changed the notion of what a screen comedy could be. A KING IN NEW YORK/A WOMAN OF PARIS Chaplin jabs at social conventions! U.S. pop culture is the target of his satiric A King in New York. And the whirl of French high society frames director Chaplin's tragic love story A Woman of Paris.

MONSIEUR VERDOUX Killer comedy! Chaplin turns his sunny nature inside out to play a roving gent who wins the love and bank accounts of spinsters, then murders the hapless biddies.

Customer Reviews:

Don't expect the box to last..........2007-04-03

When my copy of this set arrived, I found that the set's box (with Chaplin on the cover) was just a little too big for the set itself - maybe an eighth of an inch extra space, so when the whole package got tightly shrinkwrapped, the excess space and the tip of one corner were crushed to fit around the DVDs. Not a huge deal, but it means that the box, already somewhat flimsy for the number of DVDs it houses, lost some of its structual integrity, and now doesn't support itself so well; once you take a couple of the DVDs out, it quickly loses its right angles -- the ramshackle rhombus effect. So I sent it back, and the replacement has just arrived...with the exact same problem. Of course, while Amazon makes it ever so easy to "Leave Seller Feedback" for any of its thousands of Amazon Marketplace affiliates, there is one seller for which they do not allow this option: Amazon itself. Anyway, I'm sure it's a great set, and the defect in question is minor, but it's always a little disappointing when you look forward to a new purchase, then find that it is just a tiny bit damaged before you even unwrap it. I have had this experience twice now, and I guess I'll just give up, and try not to look at what could have been a fairly handsome box. But when you get yours, set the box on a table with the DVD spines lined up in front of you, and have a look at the lower right-hand corner of the box. Hopefully, you *won't* see what I mean. But if you do, you'll find that this box would have been just perfect if the set had included one more, thin DVD.

Superb and very entertaining.......2007-01-19

Excellent variety of Chaplin movies that are worth many viewings and well-worth the price of the collection. Good quality DVD's of very old films. Monsieur Verdoux, a rare Chaplin "talkie", is dated in plot structure and appeal and includes several scenes of stilted acting (Chaplin is actually a better actor than the others in the cast). Although not of the caliber of the silent films, it makes an interesting addition to the masterpieces, if you are studying Chaplin's works and it is fascinating to hear Chaplin's voice. His physical comedy is artful, masterful, highly acrobatic, perfectly timed, surprising, and hilarious; it has not been surpassed in 80-plus years.

The true comedy collection.......2006-12-15

This wonderful boxed set completes the chaplin collection, this in my view is the better chaplin collection it includes such classics as city lights, modern times, the great dictator, and many more classics.my advice to the other chaplin fans is go out and buy the chaplin collection 1&2 before there all sold out.

Films to Enjoy.......2006-08-15

The fine Humor and art creativity found in this treasure films are incomparable. It's worth the price.

Very good, with few complaints.......2006-08-05

Once again, as with Volume 1, the main pieces of this box are first class, simply great quality reissues of Chaplins greatest (and less great) films. It's the other pieces that leave cause me to scratch my head.

So, let's start with what is good.

We have here some of Chaplin's finest silent work, including my favorite, The Circus. The films are expertly restored and projected at a speed which is about as close to the subjective "correct speed" as possible. The soundtracks are well restored, and there are plenty of cut scenes, outtakes and home movies to go along with the original films.

A couple of films are notoriously weak, and one just has to look at the box to figure out which ones those are. "Monsieur Verdoux" has only one disc, and "A Woman of Paris" and "A King in New York" actually share a 2 disc set. But these films are essential to completing Chaplin's legacy, and it is good to have them well issued and in as nice a presentation as possible.

There is a 5.1 surround soundtrack, which is really wierd, since these were issued in mono to start with. Why not just colorize the films while you're at it, M2K? (I know, some people just can't watch a film with a mono soundtrack, but this is really excessive.)

The we have the documentary by Richard Schickel, which, which good, is very frustrating. It's great to see brief clips of the Keystone films in excellent quality, but isn't it time to release the ENTIRE collection of Keystones in best-possible quality? WHEN, OH WHEN, WILL THIS HAPPEN!

Some argument could also be made that the short films in this collection could have been better considered. There are several different versions of some of these films, "Shoulder Arms" comes to mind, and it is quite possible that the version sused here are the best pictorial quality, but not the best acting quality. This is a very subjective topic, but I would have liked to see the original "Shoulder Arms" included as well, perhaps the most substantially different of the versions. This is a minor complaint, though.

The "Chaplin Today" documentaries, as in the first box set, are rather pathetic, and self-defeating in their attempts to make Chaplin relevent to today's audiences. If Chaplin wasn't relevent, then nobody would by this box set, and I wouldn't bother writing this review. But he is relevent. Trying to convice people so doesn't work, unfortunately, so we end up with these rather pathetic documentary attempts.

But overall, this is a collection of gems, and complaining about the ancillary pieces of this collection is like complaining about the floor in the room containing the Hope Diamond. It's only the actual films that matter, and they are superb.

Average customer rating:

"Monsieur Verdoux" was a disaster at the American box-office...
an ironic delight of a movie
KILL A MILLION THEY CALL YOU A HERO; KILL ONE AND THEY KILL YOU
HOORAY FOR RAYE!
Chaplin adrift in a dark and sinister world

Monsieur Verdoux
Starring: Irving Bacon , Marjorie Bennett , Audrey Betz , Virginia Brissac , and Charles Chaplin
Director: Charles Chaplin
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Similar Items:

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ASIN: B00017LVQY
Release Date: 2004-03-02

Amazon.com essential video

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 civilized 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 until it gets too heavy-handed, as evidenced when a woman he spares returns years later as the mistress of a munitions manufacturer. 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." --David Kronke

Description

Charles Chaplin turns his traditionally sunny sensibilities inside out with this sublime black comedy about a family man who secretly uses murder to support his beloved invalid wife and child. There's little of the immortal Tramp in Verdoux, yet the fastidious dandy is not lacking in comic graces. Most hilarious of all are the always-foiled attempts to dispatch the raucous Annabella (Martha Raye). When this most atypical Chaplin film opened, the world was not ready to look death in the face and walk away smiling. Today, Monsieur Verdoux ranks among Chaplin's best works. It is killer comedy.

Customer Reviews:

"Monsieur Verdoux" was a disaster at the American box-office..........2007-01-08

Abandoning for the first time his character of Charlie the Tramp and creating the new and intriguing one of "Monsieur Verdoux," Charles Chaplin subtitled his first film in seven years "a comedy of murders." This was meant to shock, as was the picture's attack on war and on capitalism as the source of war, not to mention its ironic sidelights on Christianity--but to shock us to our senses...

"Monsieur Verdoux" managed to shock the American middle class, but not in the way its maker had intended... The public connected the distasteful message of this "crazy" film with vague memories of scandals in Chaplin's personal life and his supposed left-wing leanings...

The screen's greatest actor, its most important creative figure, the most famous man in its history, known to more of his contemporaries than even the central figures of the great religions, Chaplin for the first time tasted defeat and failure...

"Limelight," which appeared five years later, was booked into only 3,000 theaters instead of the 12,000 which in earlier days had always been eager for any Chaplin film... This debacle had nothing do with the quality of the picture but stemmed from the efforts of pressure groups which, incensed at Chaplin's defiance of accepted moral and economic standards, exerted all their power to persuade exhibitors not to show and the public not to attend it... Only its tremendous European success, as in the case of "Monsieur Verdoux," saved it from financial catastrophe...

But bigotry and hate were not the only reasons for the failures of these two highly personal confessions... They are the films of a man who has withdrawn to a distance to observe the human comedy, and it is from a distance that he sends us his messages... Their Sophoclean irony and detachment are matched by a latent savage anger and an infinite compassion... They deal in high style with our highest concerns... Above all they seek to speak the truth, not the acceptable truth, not necessarily the whole truth, but the truth as an aging man leaving illusions behind sees it... If they have a film counterpart, it is Von Stroheim's "Greed," and, pressure groups or no, they were bound to meet the fate of "Greed."

an ironic delight of a movie.......2006-12-25

I first saw the movie when I was 17 years old and was smitten immediately by its dark, perverse humor, and especially the performance of Martha Raye. It is worth buying just for her performance alone, a classic of comedy. Some of it seems a bit awkward and not smoothly done, such as the speeding wheels of the train to indicate travel and time passing. And some of Chaplain's shticks such as the way he counts bills seem a bit gratuitous but these flaws don't do much damage to the whole. One of Chaplain's best if not the very best.

KILL A MILLION THEY CALL YOU A HERO; KILL ONE AND THEY KILL YOU.......2006-09-06

THe first scene filmed by Chaplin is the final execution scene in which he sums up the philosophy of the whole film and CHaplin's own pacifist philosophy. If we invade other nations to steal their oil, etc., and kill thousands of innocent bystanders, women and childrne in the process, why are we called heroic and patriotic, but if we delight some lonely old widows and fill their dreams and then relieve them of their sorrow in order to feed our suffering family, why are we a villian?

And why does the grotesquely rudely American Martha Raye (The model for so many current comediennes?) survive? I guess because she was a lottery winner for her wealth, and not a silly lonely old widow.

Check out the streetwalker. Cute. But then corrupted by wealth and gaining money through her munitions manufacturing lover and thus in favor of war and therefore Verdouz loses heart whereas he once admired her pragmatism

HOORAY FOR RAYE!.......2006-04-23

When Chaplin set about to tell the tale of MONSIEUR VERDOUX, he wanted an actress for the role of the indestructible Annabella who could hold her own in the comedy department. He looked no further than stage/radio/movie star Martha Raye, who was known for her improvisational skills and was fearless when it came to comedy. Raye considered this the high point of her career, to have been chosen by the man she considered The Master as a co-star. Without exception, critics hail the rowboat scene when Verdoux is trying vainly to murder the obnoxious Annabella as the highlight of the film. Given the right director, Raye was matchless in comedy and also proved to be a capable dramatic actress in a precious few roles (Jumbo, The Gossip Columnist). Watch this film, if only to appreciate the comedy genius of Martha Raye. Oh, Chaplin ain't bad either.

Chaplin adrift in a dark and sinister world.......2005-12-13

Chaplin plays a French Bluebeard who loses his respectable job at a bank during the Depression and then takes to marrying and murdering rich women in order to get the money to support his invalid wife and child. It's a black comedy with a lot more emphasis on black than comedy. There's intelligence here and a great deal of cynicism: the world is an evil place, kindness is a rare commodity, etc.

What shocked most people was Chaplin's total lack of remorse as the murderer; he treats it just like a business. There are a couple of old comedy routines thrown in (most memorable is where he tries to bump off Martha Raye in a rowboat), but they don't amount to much. Chaplin's "common man" (so well represented by the little tramp in earlier pictures) is now lost in a sea of worldly despair and nihilist philosophy. There might be a lot to chew on here about the fate of mankind in a bleak world, but it's not much fun to watch.

Average customer rating:

"Monsieur Verdoux" was a disaster at the American box-office...
an ironic delight of a movie
KILL A MILLION THEY CALL YOU A HERO; KILL ONE AND THEY KILL YOU
HOORAY FOR RAYE!
Chaplin adrift in a dark and sinister world

Charles Chaplin: Monsieur Verdoux
Starring: Irving Bacon , Marjorie Bennett , Audrey Betz , Virginia Brissac , and Mady Correll
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Classics | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

Comic Criminals | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

Classic Comedies | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

Black Comedy | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

Drama | Kids & Family | Genres | DVD | Video

Comedy | Kids & Family | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $14.99 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( C ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

Limelight (2 Disc Special Edition)
A King in New York / A Woman of Paris (2 Disc Special Edition)
The Circus (2 Disc Special Edition)
The Great Dictator (2 Disc Special Edition)
The Chaplin Revue (2 Disc Special Edition)

ASIN: 6305837104
Release Date: 2000-05-16

Amazon.com essential video

Description

On one level, "Monsieur Verdoux" is the story of a fired French bank clerk who goes into business for himself marrying and murdering women for their money. On another level, the film is an indictment of war, in which, according to Verdoux, mass murder is legalized, celebrated and paraded. "Killing is the enterprise by which your system prospers," Verdoux says. "As a mass killer, I am an amateur by comparison." This evaluation was particularly apt in the case of the wife, played by the irrepressible Martha Raye. As Annabella, Raye is one spouse who simply refuses to be murdered, comically evading the deadly traps that Verdoux sets for her. A complete change of pace for Chaplin, "Monsieur Verdoux" was a critical and box office failure upon its release in 1947 as the public was not ready for a cynical antihero from the man who brought the world The Little Tramp. However, its re-release in 1964 set box office records as a new audience attuned to the pleasures of black comedy by "Dr. Strangelove" gave the film the reception it richly deserved.

Customer Reviews:

"Monsieur Verdoux" was a disaster at the American box-office..........2007-01-08

an ironic delight of a movie.......2006-12-25

KILL A MILLION THEY CALL YOU A HERO; KILL ONE AND THEY KILL YOU.......2006-09-06

HOORAY FOR RAYE!.......2006-04-23

Chaplin adrift in a dark and sinister world.......2005-12-13