Monsieur Verdoux

Monsieur Verdoux (1947) is Charlie Chaplin's pitch-black comedy, and you can watch it online on iFILM. After thirty loyal years as a bank clerk, Henri Verdoux is laid off and takes up a grim new trade: marrying well-off widows and quietly doing away with them.

The money all flows to his real family, an invalid wife and small son who suspect nothing. Verdoux juggles several "marriages" across different towns, tangling his timetables and barely keeping ahead of the bodies. One bride wrecks his tidy system completely: the loud, maddeningly indestructible Annabella, played by Martha Raye in the film's funniest scenes. Chaplin plays this dapper killer with an icy charm a world away from the Little Tramp.

Orson Welles first floated the premise, and Chaplin sharpened it into a stinging parable: one man kills a few for money and meets the guillotine, while nations slaughter millions and call it war. The 1947 US release flopped amid the political campaign against Chaplin, but critics later reclaimed it as one of his boldest films. Stream Monsieur Verdoux (1947) online on iFILM.