Monsieur Verdoux (1947, Charles Chaplin)

Political persecution had not yet driven Charlie Chaplin back to England in 1947, yet he was clearly an already bitter, bitter man. Monsieur Verdoux has a premise which has been explored in films ranging from horror to comedy over the years, that of the "Bluebeard" - the 17th century French folktale of a nobleman who marries and murders for money. Given that Chaplin's screenplay mentions Bluebeard by name, it's bizarre that he supposedly paid Orson Welles a million dollars for the idea and gave him an original story credit. Welles had starred in a film just the year before which placed a Nazi war criminal into the formula, and Hitchcock made Shadow Of A Doubt just three years earlier - surely Chaplin had at least heard of them? Did he just want to give Welles some helpful extra recognition during that rocky Hollywood period, empathizing as he went through a rocky period of his own?

Verdoux was the first talkie Chaplin made after The Great Dictator seven years earlier and while I'm not surprised a film without Hitler isn't as funny, I'm amazed that a film which doesn't satirize Hitler's rise to power could actually be more cynical. The potential for black comedy in the story of a male black widow is fertile, as the lighter moments in the amazing horror-thriller The Stepfather would demonstrate decades later. Being aware of Chaplin's demonization for political gain by American anticommunists at the time of this film's making I was eagerly anticipating a satirical skewering of some sort. The only real objects of derision to be found in the story is a nouveau riche floozy whom Chaplin is waiting for the right moment to dispatch while in the meantime he can barely conceal his contempt. Martha Raye plays the part so hilariously it's a shame that she appears so late in the episodic layout of the story.

In the preceding chapters, Chaplin is like a stern parent making us eat every last piece of cabbage before desert: showing us how Verdoux's machinations elude the police, the procedures of the unexpectedly dignified investigator (why not make him like J. Edgar Hoover? Or humorous in any way?) and a lengthy sequence involving the testing of a new untraceable poison on a beautiful young tramp girl whom Verdoux decides to spare after she professes her faith in the basic goodness of humanity. Such sequences between Chaplin and his ingenues have been his trademark since City Lights and this one is very well done. Unfortunately the first half of the film which the scene demarcates is sporadically amusing at best and seemingly deliberately so. When Chaplin repeats the same fast money-counting bit more than once it's like he's mocking the audience's desire for some different gags in this ostensible comedy, black or not. Chaplin manages to make Verdoux himself sort of odd without actually being amusing, the way the Little Tramp's little movements could be funny in themselves. The one dramatic subplot established in the interminable first half which actually would have been worth following up on - the existence of Verdoux's pre-Bluebeard wife and child whom he rarely sees - is dropped as soon as it's introduced.

The film ends with a speech from Verdoux that's the anthithesis of the one which caps The Great Dictator: that idealistic and queasily naïve call to "fight for a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness" at the same time science and progress were being used to melt children into soap. At the end of the film Chaplin pithily paraphrases Stalin's famous line about how one death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic, just before he is lead to the gallows. I've heard people throw this line at me in the heat of political debate like some great moral profundity, not the nihilistic self-justification of history's biggest mass murder, and the unsettling thing about Chaplin's quotation is his probable lack of irony in the wake of World War II (which makes a cameo appearance.) If he didn't want HUAC to come after him as they did, maybe he shouldn't have given such a half-sympathetic shout-out. Monsieur Verdoux is little more than a free form exercise in world weariness from a former champion of life's beauty. While some of Chaplin's comedic artistry remains, only total curmudgeons will be entertained from start to finish.

A Serious Man (2009, Joel & Ethan Coen)

Say, have you heard about the newest film from the world famous Coen brothers? From metropolitan film student jerkbags to Middle American plebes, three decades of cultural landmarks from Raising Arizona to Fargo to No Country For Old Men have made the duo America's most beloved filmmakers whose body of work does not include aliens or dinosaurs. Surely any studio backing one of their projects would be eager to promote their latest potential Oscar winner, and perhaps the executives at Focus Features were ready to until the lights went down in the screening room and the Eastern European shtetl prologue began. Then they realized: this is a Jew movie, and those haven't been fashionable since that other Jew with the dinosaurs.

On some level they may have been right, the fact this film is about being Jewish doesn't mean it's Fiddler On The Roof. After years of creating memorable Jewish characters like the eponymous Barton Fink and he who won't roll on Shabbos, Walter Sobchak, the Coens have finally made a film about Judaism as they see it and their views are uncomfortably identical to the average American Jew today: ambivalent at best. The period 1967 setting may as well take place today, especially during the subplot involving Michael Stuhlbarg's son Aaron Wolff letting pot distract from his Bar Mitzvah preparation. Had pot even reached the suburbs of Minnesota in 1967? The Coens' memory for the era and landscape of their youth is realized with time machine perfection by their go-to cinematographer Roger Deakins and the production design of Jess Gonchor. Maybe they needed to transport themselves for a subject so personal - like their father, Stuhlbarg's Larry Gopnik is is a math professor. Over their whole careers they've oscillated between light comedies to pitch lack comedies or thrillers, and this is their first pitch black comedy to suggest that a series of misfortunes can befall a man in the absence of a loving god rather than the omniscience of an author like Cormac McCarthy.

Stuhlbarg is a pushover Jew bullied daily ever more by some rather ugly stereotypes of pushy Jews. His harpy wife Sari Lennick is leaving him for their patronizingly touchy-feely friend Fred Melamed. His children don't appreciate him and his brother Richard Kind is leeching off him by living on the couch. As these relations grow hilariously cringe-inducing, Stuhlbarg seeks counsel with the local rabbinate and finds no help whatsoever. The ineffectiveness of the rabbinical class to assuage Stuhlbarg's despair is really as anti-religious as the film gets. In a few striking intervals, Stuhlbarg's Jewish identity is reinforced against his will the way most modern unobservant Jews choose voluntarily: through reminders of his social status as an outsider. As the abuse piles on we beg for an explosion of rage, Sobchak style: the whole world has gone crazy, and Larry Gopnik is the only one left who gives a shit about the rules, unlike his cheating wife or the failing student who attempts to bribe him. In a couple other intervals, Larry affirms his faith on his own terms by listening to records of beautiful Cantorial music in private. By the standards of 1967 this certainly doesn't make him close to devout, but in today's age of hedonistic paganism it's a touchingly simple gesture of love for a higher power.

When my most conservative Jewish friend asked me if this film was a positive or negative portrayal of his religion, I wasn't really sure. As the Coens run their protagonist through 105 minutes of personal catastrophe they clearly exhibit respect for his moral integrity no matter how it seems to fail him. They sympathize rather than detach themselves at a satiric distance from the object of their torture, like that famously self-loathing Jew Franz Kafka. While their portrayal of the synagogue as an obsequious and uncaring form of middle management - sometimes pitch perfectly, as in the little lame jokes made during services - is downright hostile, Larry's strength to carry on through his hardships is only made possible by his faith. This is what makes the difference to me between the film being an exercise in cynicism towards those who try to do the right thing and a meditation on the fact that, as it was for Job, doing the right thing is not always rewarded.

The Coens have made a film about being Jewish which celebrates in a mordant way the common point of pride between the most and least observant Jews: survival. I don't think my friend would approve of their agnosticism, but the sincerity of the Coens' questions are unquestionable and profoundly provocative.

Best picture of 2009.