There is a constant effort by the fans of Orson Welles to pinpoint films of importance that he had a hand in even if he did not appear in them or direct them. The two most notable ones are AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, which was based on a 1946 Broadway musical flop that Welles directed and starred in, and MONSIEUR VERDOUX. The former had a score (a bad one) by Cole Porter, and elaborate sets and tricks - and folded after a few months, plunging Welles into bankruptcy. He had to live in Europe afterward due to tax problems. Welles sold his interest in the musical to his producer Mike Todd. And Todd turned around and made his one great film out of AROUND THE WORLD in 1955, without even offering Welles a cameo in it. In 1945-46 Welles also sold a screenplay and idea for a movie about the career of the French Bluebeard murderer Landru to Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin would have been directed by Welles, but instead ended up doing the film himself - and only remembering on giving Welles any credit when Welles pointedly reminded him about it. This was MONSIEUR VERDOUX.
Henri Desire Landru was a criminal and second hand furniture dealer. He was married (legitimately) and from most accounts was a good husband (except for having a mistress) and a good father. But starting in 1917 Landru began romancing a series of middle aged women he met through the matrimonial columns of Paris newspapers, sweeping them off their feet, and then marrying them. He used several country locations (most infamously a nice looking country villa at the town Gambais) to take his brides for disposal: he would take them to the villa, kill them (probably by poison or strangulation) and then burn their bodies in a large stove/fireplace in the house. He may have chosen the villa too because it was near a convenient cemetery - a perfect place to hide corpse remains like bones.
From 1917 to 1919 Landru (as best the authorities figured out) married 12 women and killed them and the son of one of them. He was caught when members of several of the families went to the police about the sudden disappearances of these ladies, and one of the families ran across Landru and tipped off the police. In arresting him they found he had a remarkably exact accounting system regarding the expense of each marriage including the cost of tickets to Gambais (significantly two tickets going, but only one coming back). His trial in 1922 was an international event, and he did not disappoint. An exceptionally clever and even witty man, he actually made the court laugh frequently, until the evidence of mass murder became too evident. He was convicted, and guillotined.
Henri Landru was bald headed and wore a spade beard. Charlie Chaplin, as Landru's screen clone "Henri Verdoux" has white hair, a fancy little mustache, and wears butterfly collars and homburg hats. He is a total dandy - and quite the charmer. He also is able to thrown himself into each different personality and role he plays as the husbands of the various victims. In actual fact he is a bank teller who lost his job - and had a crippled wife and sickly child to take care of. He pretends to be (among other things) a furniture dealer, a retired sea captain, an expert on jewelry (he does show some knowledge of jewelry with one of his wives), and several other types of professionals.
Chaplin, wisely, made most of the women Verdoux romances pretty obnoxious. But he is defeated by one of them - Annabella (Martha Raye, in arguably her greatest comic role). Annabella is a wealthy ex - theater person who has a zest for life, is fairly guileless (she is cheated by two old friends at one point), and has some gross physical habits that disgust the fastidious Henri. But every time he tries to kill her (including a hysterical attempt at drowning her in a rowboat) he gets injured or frustrated. She and only one other one of his would-be victims escape his murder plans.
So does a young woman (Marilyn Nash) whom Landru picks up one night to experiment with using a new poison. But the young woman is so full of promise and shares some of his ideas that he lets her live. Later she will be the last woman he shares a good evening with, but by then she has become the mistress of an arms manufacturer.
Chaplin used the film to rip apart the hypocrisy of modern life - we condemn the Landrus and George Joseph Smiths and Al Capones who use murder for money purposes, but we have a society that insists that building large armed forces are good ideas, that rewards arms manufacturers and perverted scientists making weapons with money and glory. Made after two world wars shattered Europe, and after the Great Depression showed the emptiness of greed, MONSIEUR VERDOUX indicted modern society as nothing else in Chaplin's work had ever done before. It is the most hopeless of his greatest films - for it ends with it's hero going to his doom, and welcoming that doom. For Verdoux knows that unless society can change (and he doubts it will) we will all be following him soon.
Henri Desire Landru was a criminal and second hand furniture dealer. He was married (legitimately) and from most accounts was a good husband (except for having a mistress) and a good father. But starting in 1917 Landru began romancing a series of middle aged women he met through the matrimonial columns of Paris newspapers, sweeping them off their feet, and then marrying them. He used several country locations (most infamously a nice looking country villa at the town Gambais) to take his brides for disposal: he would take them to the villa, kill them (probably by poison or strangulation) and then burn their bodies in a large stove/fireplace in the house. He may have chosen the villa too because it was near a convenient cemetery - a perfect place to hide corpse remains like bones.
From 1917 to 1919 Landru (as best the authorities figured out) married 12 women and killed them and the son of one of them. He was caught when members of several of the families went to the police about the sudden disappearances of these ladies, and one of the families ran across Landru and tipped off the police. In arresting him they found he had a remarkably exact accounting system regarding the expense of each marriage including the cost of tickets to Gambais (significantly two tickets going, but only one coming back). His trial in 1922 was an international event, and he did not disappoint. An exceptionally clever and even witty man, he actually made the court laugh frequently, until the evidence of mass murder became too evident. He was convicted, and guillotined.
Henri Landru was bald headed and wore a spade beard. Charlie Chaplin, as Landru's screen clone "Henri Verdoux" has white hair, a fancy little mustache, and wears butterfly collars and homburg hats. He is a total dandy - and quite the charmer. He also is able to thrown himself into each different personality and role he plays as the husbands of the various victims. In actual fact he is a bank teller who lost his job - and had a crippled wife and sickly child to take care of. He pretends to be (among other things) a furniture dealer, a retired sea captain, an expert on jewelry (he does show some knowledge of jewelry with one of his wives), and several other types of professionals.
Chaplin, wisely, made most of the women Verdoux romances pretty obnoxious. But he is defeated by one of them - Annabella (Martha Raye, in arguably her greatest comic role). Annabella is a wealthy ex - theater person who has a zest for life, is fairly guileless (she is cheated by two old friends at one point), and has some gross physical habits that disgust the fastidious Henri. But every time he tries to kill her (including a hysterical attempt at drowning her in a rowboat) he gets injured or frustrated. She and only one other one of his would-be victims escape his murder plans.
So does a young woman (Marilyn Nash) whom Landru picks up one night to experiment with using a new poison. But the young woman is so full of promise and shares some of his ideas that he lets her live. Later she will be the last woman he shares a good evening with, but by then she has become the mistress of an arms manufacturer.
Chaplin used the film to rip apart the hypocrisy of modern life - we condemn the Landrus and George Joseph Smiths and Al Capones who use murder for money purposes, but we have a society that insists that building large armed forces are good ideas, that rewards arms manufacturers and perverted scientists making weapons with money and glory. Made after two world wars shattered Europe, and after the Great Depression showed the emptiness of greed, MONSIEUR VERDOUX indicted modern society as nothing else in Chaplin's work had ever done before. It is the most hopeless of his greatest films - for it ends with it's hero going to his doom, and welcoming that doom. For Verdoux knows that unless society can change (and he doubts it will) we will all be following him soon.