Chaplin, (Sir) Charles (Spencer) - André Bazin
ANDRÉ BAZIN
It is easy to foresee what people will find to criticize in Monsieur Verdoux. There is a fairly complete list of them in an article in La Revue des Temps Modernes which goes about as far as anything could in misrepresentation. The author of the critique expresses herself as profoundly disappointed by Chaplin's work because to her it seems ideologically, psychologically, and aesthetically incoherent. "Monsieur Verdoux's crimes are dictated neither by a need for self-defense nor in order to repair injustices, nor by a deep ambition, nor by the desire to improve anything in the world around him. It is a sad thing to have expended so much energy and proved absolutely nothing, to have succeeded in producing neither a comedy nor a film with social implications, and to have beclouded the most important issues." (p. 103)
If Verdoux has a "meaning," why look for it in terms of some moral, political, or social ideology or other, or...
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