As a fresh 35mm print of Charlie Chaplin's quintessential 1947 thriller Monsieur Verdoux begins circulating through revival houses around the country, it seems like a good time to remind people that while the late actor is mainly known as a star of the silent screen, he definitely didn't die with it. Although the greatest slapstick artist of all time initially rejected the development of sound film, mocking it with hilariously exaggerated voices in City Lights, he eventually adopted it after realizing that resistance was futile. However, he refused to simply throw in a few lines of dialogue to accompany his beloved tramp shtick, choosing instead to take his career in a fresh direction. While Chaplin made many sound films over the course of several decades, only two of them really qualify as classic talkies (except for Limelight, which deserves a category of its own). Late flops like A King of New York don't really hold together, but Chaplin's initial forays into the world of sound film display his talent as a composer of distinctive prose.

His first work of this era, The Great Dictator, remains a masterpiece that broadened the potential of his tramp character with a modified Prince and the Pauper tale applied to World War II, and Chaplin doing double duty playing both a Jewish barber and an exaggerated Adolf Hitler (or "Hinkel," rather). Monsieur Verdoux, in which he plays a frustrated man whose losses during the Great Depression lead to a twisted scheme where he marries, murders and robs rich women, represented something else altogether: Chaplin's only brooding melodrama, the occasional laughs are almost incidental.

Well, darlings, tomorrow marks the one month anniversary of this column, and to celebrate the occasion, I've put together a bit of a grab bag for you. Because there's nothing I find more celebratory than a good argument, this first milestone seemed like as good a time as any to go through my hate mails and answer trackbacks and post a few thoughts and responses. If you're dying for new(er) content, come back next week, when I'll have some thoughts on how the success of V for Vendetta breaks every rule in modern Hollywood.

On to the brawls...

Andre Soares was kind enough to link to my last column, in which I connected a few tidbits from SXSW to the ever-evolving relationship between consumers and critics, over at the Alternative Film Guide. But, taking exceptions with a few points, he went on to file what looks a lot like a counter-argument. The thing is, I think Soares and I actually agree on most every aspect of the issue. Soares starts off by pointing out that Hollywood makes the lion's share of its profits off of a consumer roughly 30 years younger than the average critic: "film critics can't be expected to represent the tastes of a film audience composed mostly of teenagers and very young adults -- unless, of course, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Nation were to hire fourteen-year-olds to write film reviews." That's a valid point, but it's also just a little fatalistic -- he's essentially saying that any hope for a connection between the people who write about movies and the people who pay to see them is doomed.