I thought I would miss Chaplin’s ”Monsieur Verdoux” playing at Film Forum.
But on the last day I managed to see it.
Chaplin’s speech at the end of “The Great Dictator” is a bit sentimental, maybe even unnecessary; the ending of Monsieur Verdoux is not less moralistic but far more effective.
Once again I’ll quote J. Hoberman writing in the Times: ‘“Monsieur Verdoux” may once again be timely, but the audacity of its statement derives less from Chaplin’s antiwar polemic than from his antiheroic pose. No star ever took a greater risk with his public image or more directly challenged his audience. If Chaplin ridiculed Hitler by transforming him into the Little Tramp, he did something far more disturbing in socializing the Little Tramp. “By his very existence,” Bazin noted, Verdoux “renders society guilty.” Approaching eternity, the convicted killer subtly reverts to the Tramp’s distinctive gait. Has humanity sunk to this? In the movie’s ultimate gag it becomes apparent that, as Bazin wrote, “They’re going to guillotine Charlie!”’

One thing that Hoberman does not touch on is that in “Monsieur Verdoux” older women’s hunger for love and attention is a costly and sometimes deadly affair.
Not only in “Monsieur Verdoux.” And aren’t we all older women?