Chaplin
1940
2 Hours
Not bad, funny, with sound. The moralizing speech at the end shows the quixotic frailty of Chaplin himself; an odd, beautifully simple-minded idealist; one in great erst.
four stars, but no more.
Chaplin
1947
2 Hours
I just erased, in error, a very through review, and do not have the wakefulness to repeat it. A magnificent film, a critical and commercial failure that Chaplin described as “the cleverest and most brilliant of my career”.
Verdoux loses his position as a bank clerk to the depression: a position he has held for 30 years. He becomes a ‘blue bears’, a serial killer, seducing middle aged women and making the disappear when he is able to obtain their assets. This all to support, in middle class comfort, a young son and disabled wife.
The marvelous horror of it comes when the final market crash ruins hinm completely, despite his disparate methods of seduction and murder. The film than jumps to him as older, and worn out, and he describes how his wife and so did not survive the market crash. One suspects that, having used the most desperate measures to obtain the ignorant tranquil happiness of his family, he himself killed them to spare them the impossible but inevitable downturn that would have followed. Thus we see, like a great tower, the pride, even in his middle class standing, of this middle class hero and villain.
Chaplin
1923, 85 min
Starring two others – not Chaplin.
Listed as a masterpiece, it was Ok, but not great.
3 stars?
