We’re trying something new here, a bit of a free for all where we can shoot the breeze. In the meantime, I’ll tell you a little bit about one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, Charlie Chaplin. In 1947, he released the film Monsieur Verdoux, a pitch black comedy and departure from his usual works. He portrayed a man who was laid off from his banking job during the Great Depression, so he became a bluebeard, marrying rich older women and murdering them for their fortunes so he could support his disabled wife and child. The film was his most controversial of them all. Oh, not because of the murder, but because it was an anti-war film. When the man caught up to him, he said that in the business of mass murder, he was an amateur compared to the military industrial complex, who murder millions of men, women and children, many of whom are innocent civilians. It was picketed by veterans groups, and was the final nail in the coffin of Chaplin’s US career. However, it did quite well in Europe. The moral of the film is essentially the moral to the song Murder by Numbers by The Police, another fantastic piece of art that is often misconstrued. Anyway, see this movie. It’s available on Filmstruck, DVD, Blu-Ray, and you can rent it on Amazon.
Off Topic
