Of the directors whose work Agee most admired, John Huston was perhaps the one he was most personally drawn to. In the course of working on this article the two met for the first time. Subsequently they worked together on The African Queen.
I think Monsieur Verdoux is one of the best movies ever made, easily the most exciting and most beautiful since Modern Times. I will add that I think most of the press on the picture, and on Chaplin, is beyond disgrace.
In 1949, the film critic James Agee published his influential essay “Comedy’s Greatest Era,” in which he recounts the golden years of silent comedy and proclaims that the genre’s “four most eminent masters” were Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon
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