(Charles Chaplin, US 1947, 123 min.)

Leaving the Little Tramp behind, Charles Chaplin plays a soft-spoken French gentleman who supports his children and crippled wife by marrying rich widows and killing them. Chaplin’s theme—that if war is the logical extension of diplomacy, then murder is the logical extension of business—is delivered in a series of darkly hilarious and elegantly staged comic sequences, culminating in another of the director’s movingly poignant conclusions. Almost unanimously vilified upon its original release, it today takes its rightful place among Chaplin’s masterpieces.