Monsieur Verdoux

Chaplin, that master comedian, cannot seem to decide here which way to go, either into straight drama or farcical crime, but his black humor is in force nevertheless and he has produced a compelling film about the notorious Landru, better known as "Bluebeard." Instead of WWI--when Landru was busy wooing and murdering scores of women, mostly rich spinsters bereft of the males who had gone to fight at the front--Chaplin sets his tale during the late 1930s, when France was on the brink of war with Germany. Though happily married, with a young son, Chaplin feels the need to murder after losing his bank-clerk job. To support his family he romances rich widows and women ...