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"Monsieur Verdoux" 299
daring but unsuccessful experiment by the veteran comedian.
Subtitled "A comedy of murder," "Monsieur Verdoux" opens with a closeup of a tombstone inscribed: "Henri Verdoux, 1880-1937." Verdoux's voice is heard: "Good evening. I was a bank clerk until the depression of 1930." Casually, he explains how he then went into the business of marrying women with money and then liquidating them. He did it to support home and family. He never loved the women; it was strictly business. The camera then moves across the cemetery.
"The home of the Couvais family," a quarrelsome menage ruled by the spinster Lena. The postman brings a letter from the Paris National Bank. All Thelma Couvais's money was drawn out two weeks ago. A woman of fifty, she had left for Paris sometime ago and had not been heard from in three months. She had gone off to marry a man of whom young Jean says, "I'd like to have his technique." "We ought to go to the police," one of the old women insists. Pierre says wait a day or two. Jean brings out a picture of Verdoux: "Funny-looking bird, isn't he?"
"A small village somewhere in the South of France." Henri Verdoux is introduced fastidiously cutting roses in a garden; in the background, an incinerator smoking with his latest victim. (Verdoux's gay musical theme continues in counterpoint to the implications of the scene.) He avoids stepping on a worm, picking it up and placing it on a bush, with a shudder.
The doorbell rings. The postman holds out a letter for Thelma Varnay to sign. Verdoux goes upstairs, tells the no longer extant Thelma not to bother getting out of her tub, just dry your hands and sign. "There, that's it." Verdoux opens the letter, dated June 6, 1932. . . . the transaction "terminates your account." Verdoux, the