Monsieur Verdoux (United Artists), Charles Spencer Chaplin's first film since The Great Dictator (1940), is the story of a middle-aged French bank clerk who loses his job during a depression. Tenderly devoted to his invalid wife, his little boy, and their security, and disastrously ill-equipped to fend for them in a prolapsed economy, he nevertheless manages to set up in business for himself. The business: murder.
His victims are stupid, wealthy women. His difficult task is to woo them, marry them, pry their money loose, murder them, dispose of the corpses, and invest his...