GOVT 490 Durra Elmaki
Movie Review Monsieur Verdoux July 28, 2011
“Wars, conflict,” he says in prison before his execution, “it’s all business. One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero. Numbers sanctify.” The infamous line by Henri Verdoux, at the conclusion of Monsieur Verdoux, exemplifies the primary lesson of the classic black and white film. This closing comment is a strike against the society’s acception of private and public murder, where modern-society champions war heros and is hostile to homicide murders. Henri Verdoux’s character goes through his life impacted by the corrupting ethics and even far more corrupt politics of the society that he is a part of. As a result, he is accepting of his own corruption as he struggles with his need to financially support his family and the criminal acts he is willing to engage in to obtain the money that he needs to support his family with the kind of lifestyle that he wants to sustain for them.
The central themes surrounding Monsieur Verdoux focus on the corruption of society and the corruption of the self as a result. The main character though corrupted, still remains compassionate to his victims. Despite marrying multiple women, with the sole motivation of stealing their wealth and killing them, he murders them compassionately by using a painless poison. His affection and passion for his disabled wife and son comes through as he becomes willing to engage in even more audacious behavior in order to ensure that they don't return to the life of financial hardship that they once had to endure. In one of the scenes earlier on in the film, while speaking to his wife Henri Verdoux seems pained when his wife mentions the time in their life when they were sharing one bedroom. Despite his wife’s plea that she would rather live that life with the happiness that they had shared then to have the financial wealth and not be happy, Henri was disillusioned and insistent that the money they had now was ensuring of their happiness.
His manipulations and mistreatment of women is a rather contentious issue throughout the film. He sees them as disposable figures in his quest to obtain the money that he wants to have. Despite his somewhat compassionate murderous style, he has not problem manipulating them in order to murder them. He has no regard for their emotional state and is willing to make them vulnerable and trusting of him, despite his ill-intended motivations. An interesting aspect of his character is his ability to remain civilized and well mannered despite his corrupt motivations. This ability to continue to be polite makes it easy for him to charm the women that he hopes to marry and enables him to earn their trust that much faster. One of the earlier scenes in the film shows Henri snipping roses from his garden very calming despite an incinerator raging behind him. Of course this comes to an end when two women demonstrate their conniving side to him and present to be a bit of a challenge to his manipulative game.
The film was a bit of a controversy during the time of its release and it was banned by several theaters from being displayed. The hostility towards the film surrounded the film’s central theme of the pessimistic opinion of human nature and the stable presentation of the acceptance of this pessimism. The film’s release was ill-timed since the United State’s public was in a celebratory mood after the success that the country experienced following the conclusion of World War 2. The country was feeling optimistic about its new position in the world.
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