From the Guardian archiveCharlie Chaplin7 June 1947: From his home in California, Chaplin talks about new film Monsieur Verdoux, the enraged reaction to it from the American press – and his sense of impending calamity
Hollywood, May
Standing before his large English fireplace, Mr Chaplin spoke about the new film on which he is now engaged. It will revive the old Charlie with his baggy clothes and funny boots. He will be a displaced person from Europe who lands in the United States, becomes a nine-day wonder, tires of pomp and circumstance, and sails again for Europe, waving goodbye to the Statue of Liberty. What makes the little man famous is the fact that a shock has brought memories of a former life to his mind and he speaks in Sanskrit. Mr Chaplin spoke Sanskrit with dignity, and then became the immigration officer who barks “What lingo d’ye talk?” As he went on telling the story his large eyes flashed and those marvellous hands came to life, a pair of marionettes, moving swiftly in parallel lines to build fascinating shapes into the air.
A coal fire was burning against the cool Californian evening. The host was in tennis clothes and slippers. It was after a quiet family dinner with his graceful, dark-eyed wife (Eugene O’Neill’s daughter) and his two sons, who are 20 and 22 and run a serious private theatre. One of them, Mr Chaplin thinks, has real acting talent; he is pleased that the boy has refused a film offer of $2,000 a week on the grounds that he was not yet a good enough actor.
Chaplin’s hair is white now, but he has the figure and agility of a lightweight prize boxer. Fitness is important to him. He does not smoke, hardly ever takes a drink, and keeps away from the social parties of the film colony. Apart from playing tennis, he works all day. When a film is in the making he works often without a break from breakfast to midnight (this intelligence was offered by the disapproving butler, John Watson, a tall, white-haired, strong-minded Briton from Newcastle). Charlie Chaplin does not take life lightly. He loves to make people laugh. The love that comes to him from millions all over the world whose lot he has eased by a little laughter makes him happy. He beamed as he brought out a heap of parcels from England containing bulls-eyes. Some writer had mentioned that Charlie loves English bulls-eyes and cannot get them here, and ever since the parcels have been coming from English people who gave up their sweet rations to give something to the man who made them laugh. But Chaplin is not made to be a comedian. On his shoulders rests the agony of mankind. Suffering grieves him, injustice rouses his spirit. He sees himself as a satirical actor.
Monsieur Verdoux
Monsieur Verdoux, the film which was released a few weeks ago, is to Chaplin a true satirical attack on the condition of our times. “I like Verdoux,” he said. “It was the most exciting film I have ever made.” And with a shy grin and a sideways shift of both open hands; “It is in the tradition of the great English satirists, in the tradition of Dean Swift.”
M Verdoux is a dapper French bank clerk who loses his job in the slump and turns to marrying and murdering moneyed women in order to support his invalid wife and golden-curled boy in a sunny cottage. After each murder he collects the money, counts it with the skill of the bank teller, and rings up his broker to make a sound investment. His motto is: Business is business. A second slump wipes out his savings, and he walks carelessly into the arms of the police. In the death cell a priest calls on him to make his peace with God. “I am at peace with God,” says M Verdoux.” My quarrel is with men.”
The American press has been enraged by M Verdoux. America dislikes people who doubt that worldly success is proof of divine approval. Anyone who questions the American faith in progress and civilisation is liable to be attacked with a fury that knows no bounds. The press attacks on Charlie Chaplin during the last few weeks have revealed an aspect of American public life that has frightful possibilities.
A press conference
He went to New York to face the first press conference of his life. “They came on like wolves,” he told us. “They shouted at me: ‘Are you a communist? Why aren’t you an American citizen? You have made your money in this country, haven’t you?’ It was a wild scene, but I enjoyed the fight. I told them I was not interested in politics and had never voted. As an actor, an artist, I can surely please myself about that. I told them I had always been an anti-patriot. I belong to humanity; my feeling is for the people everywhere. The fact that I was born in England is an accident for which my mother was responsible, not I. As for my income, a large part of it comes from outside this country, and Uncle Sam takes his tax on it; so I am a useful paying guest.”
All the same Chaplin obviously does not like being hated. He feels insecure. He wonders how far they might go in their fury. Like many other American liberals, he has a sense of impending calamity.
Next year Charlie Chaplin intends to return to England to study the background of his next film, which will be set in London. It will be a story of the stage, “showing some of those biblical people of the theatre, the simple, trusting children of God in a wild world.” The story is still growing in his mind. He always does everything himself; he thinks out the story, writes the script and the music, produces and directs the film. “That is the only way I can satisfy my kind of histrionic talent.” As a rule he uses his own studio in Hollywood, but he may decide to produce parts of his next picture in England. As he talked about English places he said that his early life was rooted there and he had never lost the feeling of being a European. And as he talked on there rose in his mind the dream of every child born east of Bow Church: “One day, perhaps,” he said with a smile, “I should like to live in a farmhouse in Devonshire or Cornwall.”
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