#Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)

[summertimenoir]

Claudette Colbert in Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)

Costumes by Travis Banton

[thursdaymurderbub]

April 1938

[cressida-jayoungr]

One Dress a Day Challenge

Anything Goes December

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife / Claudette Colbert as Nicole de Loiselle

I haven't seen Bluebeard's Eighth Wife--one of Ernst Lubitsch's later efforts--but I happened across this photo of a costume and absolutely loved it. The film is from 1938, but we're really looking ahead to the 1940s in the shape of it. Travis Banton was the costume designer for this movie.

[silverscreenfurs]

[letterboxd-loggd]

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938) Ernst Lubitsch

May 14th 2023

[zoirohs]

BLUEBEARD'S EIGHTH WIFE (1938) — dir. Ernst Lubitsch

[chiefscar]

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (Ernst Lubitsch, 1938)

[citizenscreen]

Gary Cooper, Claudette Colbert, and director Ernst Lubitsch for BLUEBEARD’S EIGHTH WIFE (1938).

[door]

films of the year 2024

for no reason except i want to, my fave first views of the year

la chimera (2023)

poor things (2023)

trouble in paradise (1932)

all of us strangers (2023)

it happened one night (1934)

i saw the tv glow (2024)

bluebeard's eighth wife (1938)

[hwdownandout]

Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert in a publicity photo for Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938).

[summertimenoir]

Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert as Mr. and Mrs. Brandon in Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) - dir. Ernst Lubistch

[cantsayidont]

BLUEBEARD'S EIGHTH WIFE (1938): Frustratingly clumsy Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy starring Gary Cooper as an oft-married American millionaire who falls for an opportunistic Frenchwoman (Claudette Colbert), who really just wants to marry and divorce him as quickly as possible so she can start collecting his fat alimony checks and thereby revive the fortunes of her broke marquis father (Edward Everett Horton). With this cast, a Billy Wilder/Charles Brackett script, and the famed Lubitsch Touch, it seems like it ought to be a winner, but it's sunk by a disastrous lack of narrative direction and various unwelcome lapses in taste.

There are some very funny bits and an assortment of memorable throwaway lines, but the story lurches and lumbers, the main characters are unsympathetic in ways that aren't very funny, and Wilder and Brackett seem to have assumed that domestic violence was inherently hilarious. (In one particularly disagreeable scene, the Colbert character drunkenly urges her husband to kiss her, only to reveal that she's deliberately just eaten a handful of raw onions, to which she knows he's deathly allergic; he responds by threatening, with disconcerting seriousness, to murder her in her hotel suite, an escalation that's apparently intended to compensate for the lack of any actual punchline.) Cooper seems badly out of his depth, alternating between stoic stiffness and clumsy mugging, which means he's constantly being upstaged by the supporting cast (in particular Horton, who steals every scene he's in without apparent effort). There are some great pieces scattered throughout BLUEBEARD'S, but when it's bad, which it too often is, it's dreadful — one of the worst films from one of the world's great comedy directors.

MIDNIGHT (1939): Less than a year after BLUEBEARD'S EIGHTH WIFE, Wilder and Brackett redeemed themselves with this sparkling CINDERELLA variation, directed by Mitchell Leisen. Again set in Paris, it also stars Colbert, who's in rare form as Eve Peabody, a gold-digging American chorine who masquerades as a Hungarian baroness with the aid of a wealthy fairy godfather (John Barrymore) who wants her to deflect the interest of a suave playboy (Francis Lederer) who's been making time with his beloved wife (Mary Astor). This is complicated by the arrival of the handsome Hungarian-born taxi driver (Don Ameche) whose name Eve has borrowed, who's been looking for her all over the city since she ghosted him.

Using CINDERELLA as a framework gives MIDNIGHT the structure BLUEBEARD'S desperately needed, and the fluidity with which the story's various complications unfold is a delight. Better still, Leisen brings out the best in a mostly superlative cast — just watching their expressions is a lot of fun — and gives the proceedings the air of Lubitschian wit and sophistication that Lubitsch himself had recently failed to deliver. MIDNIGHT does stumble a bit at the end, with the final scenes (featuring Monty Woolley as an irrascible judge) succumbing to the heavy-handed mugging the rest of the film had mostly resisted, but it's not bad enough to sour the stew. As a result, MIDNIGHT is at least in the 85th percentile of screwball comedies, able to stand comparison with better-known classics of the genre.

[blue123bubble]

"Why do you think a woman puts a man into a straitjacket? Because she loves him" 

 - Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)

[frnndlcs]

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, Ernst Lubitsch, 1938

[divasfantasticasdohorror]

Gloria Swanson (Gloria Josephine Mae Swanson) — (27/03/1899 — 04/04/1983)

Local de Nascimento: Chicago, Illinois (EUA)

Atriz

Filmes:

A Oitava Esposa de Barba Azul (Bluebeard's Eighth Wife/1938)

Abelhas Assassinas (Killer Bees/1974)

Séries de TV:

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1964)

[brintesh]

Part 10 of watching 1001 films between the years 1920 through 1979.

91. A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

92. The Unholy Three (1930)

93. Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938)

94. The Ace of Hearts (1921)

95. The Reluctant Debutante (1958)

96. Imitation of Life (1959)

97. Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928)

98. Queen Christina (1933)

99. Tea and Sympathy (1956)

100. Show Boat (1951)