A comedian with a household name stars in a rarely-screened movie with very dark themes. The average film geek would immediately assume this references Jerry Lewis’s unreleased Holocaust debacle "The Day the Clown Cried," but the same could be applied to Charlie Chaplin’s 1947 serial killer comedy "Monsieur Verdoux."
After its initial run in 1947, where it was ridiculed by the lion’s share of the critics, "Monsieur Verdoux" was re-released in 1964 to great acclaim. The film’s story, credited to Orson Welles though the screenplay is Chaplin’s, concerns a man who marries and then murders a succession of wealthy women.
What shocked and upset the first wave of audiences to see it, however, was the complete lack of remorse on Verdoux's part, as well as his assertion that, while he has only killed a few people for personal gain, the governing systems of our land have killed millions and are, more often than not, celebrated for it. “As a mass killer, I am an amateur by comparison,” Verdoux points out. In the context of a post-WWII audience, such a message had the power to devastate and even point a decidedly uncouth finger at the direction of those who'd served. Though perhaps 25 years later, when audiences heard about Jerry Lewis’ clown-in-Auschwitz movie, the same audiences probably had to adjust their outrage barometers.
