Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife
Theatrical release poster
Directed byErnst Lubitsch
Screenplay by
Based on
Produced byErnst Lubitsch
Starring
CinematographyLeo Tover
Edited byWilliam Shea
Music by
Production
company
Distributed byParamount Pictures
Release date
  • March 23, 1938 (1938-03-23)[1]
Running time
80 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
BudgetOver $1 million[2]

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife is a 1938 American romantic comedy film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper. The film is based on the 1921 French play La huitième femme de Barbe-Bleue by Alfred Savoir and the English translation of the play by Charlton Andrews. The screenplay was the first of many collaborations between Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder.[3][4] The film is a remake of the 1923 silent version directed by Sam Wood and starring Gloria Swanson.[5]

After Bluebeard's Eighth Wife underperformed at the box office, Paramount Pictures released Lubitsch to go to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.[6][7]

Plot

On the French Riviera, wealthy American businessman Michael Brandon wants to buy pajamas, but just the tops. When the store refuses to sell the pajamas without the pants, an attractive woman named Nicole offers to buy the bottoms. As the two engage in a flirtatious conversation about Michael's insomnia, Nicole recommends that he spell "Czechoslovakia" backwards when he goes to bed to help him fall asleep. Michael then tries to figure out if the pajama bottoms are for a family member or lover.

At his hotel room, Michael's insomnia persists, so the managers offer him a suite on a higher floor, further away from the sounds of the sea. The suite is still occupied by the penniless Marquis de Loiselle, who owes 60,000 francs in unpaid hotel bills. The marquis attempts to make a business proposition to Michael, who refuses. However, when Michael recognizes the marquis' pajama bottoms, he realizes that Nicole is his daughter and, as a gesture of good will, buys a bathtub from him for 60,000 francs that was supposedly once owned by King Louis XIV.

Michael later proposes to Nicole, but she refuses. After he sends her an apology note and an invitation to dinner, they eventually fall in love. At the engagement party, Nicole is horrified to learn that Michael has been married seven times previously. She calls off the wedding, much to her father's dismay. Michael explains that he gives each of his wives a prenuptial agreement guaranteeing $50,000 a year for life if they should divorce. Nicole demands twice that amount, and Michael assents.

During the couple's honeymoon in Czechoslovakia and later at their home in Paris, Nicole keeps her discontented husband at arm's length while they live in separate rooms. He assumes that she is hoping to obtain a divorce, but this only strengthens his natural tenacity and his determination not to grant her one. It is implied that what she actually wants is to keep him interested by frustrating him so that he will not grow tired of her as he did with the previous seven wives. After reading Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, Michael tries to follow Petruchio's example by "taming" his wife, but Nicole proves too strong for him, slapping him back when he slaps her and biting him (then tenderly treating him with iodine) when he spanks her.

Nicole writes anonymous letters to Michael claiming that she has a lover, but Monsieur Pepinard, a private detective hired by Michael, assures him that the claim is false. Nicole then blackmails Pepinard into finding her a fake lover, a boxer named Kid Mulligan, so that Michael can catch her alone with him and get knocked unconscious. Complications ensue when her friend Count Albert De Regnier chooses the wrong time to return a purse that she had left behind and is mistaken for her husband by Kid Mulligan, and gets knocked out. Michael assumes that Albert is her lover and finally grants her a divorce.

Michael has a nervous breakdown and commits himself to a sanitarium. Nicole tries to visit him but is barred from doing so. Michael is placed in a straitjacket after spotting Marquis de Loiselle, who has arranged for Nicole to enter by buying the sanitarium with their new wealth. Nicole tells Michael that she fell in love with him at first sight, but she needed to break him of his habit of marrying so often. Now that she is financially independent, she explains that if they were to remarry, it would not be for his money. He frees himself from his straitjacket, walks toward her menacingly and kisses her.

Cast

Music

Production

After Wilder signed an employment contract with Paramount Pictures in 1936, Manny Wolf, story editor and Paramount writer's department head,[8][9][10][11] teamed him with Charles Brackett.[12][13] Wolf suggested to Lubitsch that Wilder write Bluebeard's Eighth Wife together with the younger Brackett, influencing Wilder to write more modern than his script for Angel.[12] Under Lubitsch's supervision, Wilder and Brackett spent a year cowriting the screenplay.[14] Filming began on 11 October 1937 and finished in January 1938, costing $1.3 million.[14]

Reception

Critic Frank Nugent of The New York Times wrote that Gary Cooper was badly miscast as the millionaire.[15]

Variety wrote: "It's a light and sometimes bright entertainment, but gets a bit tiresome, despite its comparatively moderate running time.... The Brackett-Wilder scripting is ofttimes bright but illogical and fragile."[16]

Further reading

  • "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, 1938". Motion Picture Association of America. Production Code Administration Records. digitalcollections.oscars.org.

References

  1. ^ "French actress Claudette Colbert with director Ernst Lubitsch at the premiere of 'Bluebeard's Eighth Wife' in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by William Grimes)". Getty Images. March 26, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  2. ^ "Top Films and Stars". Variety. January 4, 1939. p. 10.
  3. ^ Hopp, Glenn (2003). Billy Wilder: The Cinema of Wit 1906-2002. Taschen. p. 19. ISBN 9783822815953.
  4. ^ Eyman, Scott (2000). Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise. JHU Press. p. 385. ISBN 0-8018-6558-1.
  5. ^ ATAS/UCLA Television Archives. Study Collection (1981). ATAS-UCLA Television Archives Catalog: Holdings in the Study Collection of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences University of California, Los Angeles, Television Archives. Taylor & Francis US. p. 9. ISBN 0-913178-69-1.
  6. ^ "Ernst Lubitsch". Britannica.com. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  7. ^ Desowitz, Bill (October 1, 1997). "Back in Touch With the 'Lubitsch Touch'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  8. ^ "Leaf 000344". Broadway and Hollywood 'Movies'. Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 1932. p. 344. Retrieved February 13, 2023. Jesse J. Goldberg, Irving Lande, Manny Wolf, Jack Cunningham, Dan Totheroh and Walton Hall Smith have been added to the writing department at the Paramount ... this Page - (Large)
  9. ^ "Billy Wilder Biography - Austrian-American film director". The German Way & More. Archived from the original on May 10, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  10. ^ Phillips, Gene D. (December 22, 2009). "From Berlin to Hollywood: The Early Screenplays". Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder. doi:10.5810/kentucky/9780813125701.003.0001. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  11. ^ Toler, John (October 2019). "The Mistress of Poplar Springs, Part 2". FauquierNow. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  12. ^ a b Eyman, Scott (1993). Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-74936-1.
  13. ^ Gemünden, Gerd (2008). "Chronology". A Foreign Affair: Billy Wilder's American Films (1 ed.). Berghahn Books. pp. 167–169. doi:10.3167/9781845454180. ISBN 978-1-84545-418-0. JSTOR j.ctt9qcq5c.13. Retrieved February 12, 2023. Made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license with support from Knowledge Unlatched
  14. ^ a b film commentary by Kat Ellinger, film historian, Editor-in-Chief at Diabolique Magazine: "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife". Kino Lorber. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  15. ^ Nugent, Frank (March 24, 1938). "The Screen In Review; Gary Cooper Comes a Cropper in 'Bluebeard's Eighth Wife', at the Paramount--'The Crime of Dr. Hallet' Is Shown at the Rialto At the Rialto [sic]". The New York Times. Retrieved November 6, 2025.
  16. ^ Abel, Green (March 23, 1938). "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, 1938" (Review). Variety. p. 16. Retrieved November 6, 2025 – via oscars.org.
    "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife". Variety. December 31, 1937. Retrieved November 6, 2025.
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