February 25 . . .
His real name was Henri Landru, but the public knew him as Bluebeard. He made his living in France by placing ads in the paper saying, “Widower with comfortable income desires to meet widow with a view to matrimony.” At least he believed in truth in advertising.
Over 300 well-to-do spinsters replied, and between 1915 and 1919 he murdered ten of his newly acquired wives and burned their bodies in his stove. Today is the anniversary of his execution by guillotine in 1922.
There have been many films inspired by his nasty deeds, including Edgar G. Ulmer’s masterful low-budget B-movie, ‘Bluebeard’ (1944), with an unusually subdued and effective John Carradine as the lady-killer. But the best homage came from Charlie Chaplin, of all people, in ‘Monsieur Verdoux’ (1947). This decidedly black comedy pretty much helped destroy Chaplin’s career in America. In ‘Verdoux’, fans of the Little Tramp were shocked to see Chaplin as a suave and calculating killer. It didn’t help that at the time the film was released Chaplin was in the middle of a scandalous paternity suit brought by actress Joan Barry, and under attack for his leftist political views. And his pacifist moralizing (“Mass murdering – does not the world condone it? I am an amateur by comparison. Numbers sanctify!”) stood in problematic contrast to the slapstick sequences.
‘Monsieur Verdoux’ was originally proposed to Chaplin by Orson Welles, who was slated to direct until the always autocratic Chaplin decided to handle it himself. Although the direction is stagey and cumbersome, and the script long-winded as Chicago in April, ‘Monsieur Verdoux’ is a revolutionary, truly subversive movie, daring and often brilliantly, bleakly funny. Martha Raye steals the film whenever she’s on-screen as the clutzy and brassy Annabella, a potential victim who simply refuses to die. She actually funnier than Chaplin, and that’s saying a lot.
Click here to watch a clip from ‘Monsieur Verdoux’ . . .
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