Charlie Chaplin (1951)

"Monsieur Verdoux" 297 pretentious and muddled and sinks to almost sophomoric levels. The production itself and the technique are not of the best. Some sets have a flimsy appearance; the lighting is not always perfect; rear projection was used ineptly. And train wheels as a transition device was already a cliche in Garbo's ' 'Susan Lennox" (1931). The film gets off on a bad foot, technically speaking, in the rather long first scene with the Couvais family. Directed as though performed on a stage, all the players faced forward and were photographed full length. Although Chaplin himself prefers playing to the camera for intimate effects, it was unnatural here; and modern camera angles were seldom used. Robert Florey, the Frenchman who has directed many pictures in America and a friend of Chaplin's of long standing, gives an interesting account of his hectic experiences as associate director of "Verdoux," in his book "Hollywood d'hier et d'aujourd'hui" (Hollywood Yesterday and Today). Chaplin acts with his feet and indeed with his whole body. Therefore he insisted on having his scenes photographed mostly in full length as he had been doing for years. He did not care for trick angles or "Hollywood chichi." He once declared: "I am the unusual and I do not need camera angles. . . ." In this stand Chaplin was probably the wiser. His old methods were probably better suited to his style than Hollywood's modern methods. Chaplin also ordered closeups for himself in a scene but often restricted them for others, even where they were needed for cross-cutting in dialogue. He had an inadequate knowledge of camera lenses. He couldn't understand how his feet would show when the camera came close, apparently not aware that a lens of short focal length has a wide angle of view. He would jump from a long shot to his close scene without a transition. At all