Although I had gone through periodic qualms about my career, I never faltered in my belief that a good comedy would solve all my troubles. With this resolute feeling I completed Monsieur Verdoux. It was two years’ work because it was difficult to motivate, but the actual shooting of it only took twelve weeks – a record time for me. Then I posted my script to the Breen Office for censorship. It was not long before I received a letter from them banning it in its entirety.
The Breen Office is a branch of the Legion of Decency, a self-imposed censorship by the Motion Picture Association. I agree that censorship is necessary, but it is difficult to apply. The only suggestion I offer is that its rules be malleable and not dogmatic, and not judged on the basis of subject matter, but on good taste, intelligence and sensitive treatment.
From a moral point of view I believe that physical violence and false philosophy are as harmful as a lurid sex scene. Bernard Shaw said that punching a villain on the jaw is too easy a way of solving life’s problems.
Before discussing the censorship of Monsieur Verdoux It is necessary to give a brief synopsis of the story. Verdoux is a bluebeard, an insignificant bank clerk, who, having lost his job during the Depression, evolves a scheme of marrying old spinsters and murdering them for their money. His legitimate wife is an invalid who lives in the country with her little son, but she is ignorant of her husgand’s criminal enterprise. After the murder of a victim, he goes home as would a bourgeois husband after a hard day’s work. He is a paradox of virtue and vice: a man who, as he trims his rose garden, avoids stepping on a caterpillar, while at the end of the garden one of his victims is being consumed in an incinerator. The story contains diabolic humour, bitter satire and social criticism.
The censors sent me quite a lengthy letter explaining why they banned the picture in its entirety. The following part of their letter I quote:
… We pass over those elements which seem to be anti-social in their concept and significance. There are the sections of the story in which Verdoux indicts the ‘System’ and impugns the present-day social structure. Rather, we direct your attention to what is even more critical, and properly a matter of adjudication under the Code.…
Verdoux’s claim is, derivatively, that it is ridiculous to be shocked by the extent of his atrocities, that they are a mere ‘comedy of murders’ in comparison with the legalized mass murders of war, which are embellished with gold braid by the ‘System’. Without at all entering into any dialectics on the question of whether wars are mass murders or justifiable killings, the fact still remains that Verdoux, during the course of his speeches, makes a serious attempt to evaluate the moral quality of his crimes.
The second basic reason for the unacceptability of this story, we can state more briefly. It lies in the fact that this is very largely a story of a type of confidence man who induces a number of women to turn over their finances to him by beguiling them into a series of mock marriages. This phase of the story has about it a distasteful flavour of illicit sex, which in our judgement is not good.
At this juncture they went into a long list of detailed objections. To give an example of some of them, I am first inserting a couples of pages from my script, concerning Lydia, one of Verdoux’s illegal wives, an old woman whom he is about to murder that night.
Lydia enters a dimly lit hall then turns off light and exits into her bedroom, from where a light switches on and streaks across the darkened hallway. Now Verdoux enters slowly. At the end of the hall is a large window through which a full moon is shining. Enraptured he moves
slowly towards it.
VERDOUX[sotto voce]: How beautiful… this pale, Endymion hour…
LYDIA’S VOICE [from bedroom]: What are you talking about?
VERDOUX [trance-like]: Endymion, my dear… a beautiful youth possessed by the moon.
LYDIA’S VOICE: Well, forget about him and come to bed.
VERDOUX: Yes, my dear… Our feet were soft in flowers.
He exits into Lydia’s bedroom, leaving hall empty in semi-darkness except for the light of the moon.
VERDOUX’S VOICE [from Lydia’s bedroom]: Look at that moon. I’ve never seen it so bright!… Indecent moon.
LYDIA’S VOICE: Indecent moon! What a fool you are… ha! ha! ha! Indecent moon!
The music races up to a terrifying high crescendo, then the scene fades into morning. It is the same hallway, but now the sun is streaming through it. Verdoux enters from Lydia’s bedroom humming.
The censors’ objections to the above scene were as follows: ‘Please rephrase Lydia’s line, “Well, forget about him and come to bed” to read, “and go to bed.” We presume that this whole action will be played in such a way as to avoid any feeling that Verdoux and Lydia are about to indulge in marital privileges. Also change the repeated phrase “indecent moon”, also the business of Verdoux appearing from his wife’s bedroom humming the following morning.’
Their next objection was to the dialogue of a girl whom Verdoux meets late at night. They stated that the characterization of the girl was clearly that of a prostitute, and was therefore unacceptable.
Naturally, the girl in my story is a harlot and it would be infantile to think that she comes to Verdoux’s apartment just to see his etchings. But in this case he picks her up for the purpose of trying a lethal poison on her which leaves no trace of evidence, but will kill her within an hour after she leaves his apartment. The scene is anything but lewd or titillating. My script
