Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

When my colleague suggested watching this movie, she showed me the Shakespeare-reading scene. As I found it really amusing, I later watched the whole piece. And I didn't regret the time I spent! To say honestly, I'm not the old movie addict who knows all the history of American and European film industry back to black-and-white silent pictures and being woken up at night can list all the prominent actors and directors. I'm not into movies at all, which is the reason that my watching list is highly haphazard with British series followed up by French melodramas and historical documentaries. Bluebeard's Eighth Wife is a really nice piece featuring good-looking actors, jokes, funny without the slightest trace of vulgarity. The plot is a turned inside out ''Taming of the Shrew'', and no wonder it appears as a book the main hero reads, as I mentioned at the beginning of my review. However, it is common knowledge that not the plot itself, but its presentation matters, and in this case it does not undermine expectations. The naivety of the old times has a special charm, especially the good old happy end, so enjoy!

For some perverse reason best known to themselves these IMDb boards seem reluctant to credit the great Billy Wilder as co-scriptwriter on at least two (this one and Ninotchka) of his early classics when any buff can detect the Wilder hand at work. As it happens this represented the first time he was teamed with Charles Brackett (who DOES get a credit) and it was a great start. One commenter has noted how satisfying it is to see these type of films in old-fashioned cinemas and I couldn't agree more. In Paris one of the smaller Revival houses shows in one of its salles a more or less continuous Lubitsch retrospective and I'm pleased to report that this played to a very appreciative audience right across the age spectrum though I doubt whether any were actually alive when it was first released in 1938. The famous Wilder schtick the meet-cute is particularly tasty here when millionaire but-careful-with-it Cooper attempts to buy half a set of pajamas in a department store on the Riviera and meets with sales resistance until Claudette Colbert turns up and agrees to buy the other half. The gag is milked even more when, having exhausted the chain of command at the store itself the manager places a call to the owner, who is in bed and leaves it to reveal that he, too, is only wearing the top half of pajamas. The film is full of sight-gags like this balanced with verbal wit which makes it just about perfect. Claudette Colbert is only terrific and gets great backing from Edward Everett Horton as her impoverished titled father. David Niven in fourth billing has some funny 'business' as does Franklin Pangborn and if Gary Cooper is not up to his role lacking as he does the verbal dexterity and sophisticated persona that Wilder scripts called for at this stage of his career well, you can't have everything and what you DO have is darned near perfect.

Years before pre-nuptial agreements became a regular thing, Ernest Lubitsch made a screen comedy on which they are the basis. Bluebeard's Eighth Wife involves Gary Cooper as a multi-millionaire living on the French Riviera who's been married seven times and now marries Claudette Colbert for number eight. But Cooper's a good sport about it, he always settles with his ex-wives for a $50,000.00 a year as per an agreement they sign before marrying him. Sounds like what we now call a pre-nuptial agreement.

Of course Claudette wants a lot more than that and she feels Cooper takes an entirely too business like approach to marriage. She'd like the real deal and is willing to go some considerable lengths to get it.

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife has some really funny moments, the original meeting of Cooper and Colbert in a men's store where Cooper is insisting he wants only pajama tops and Colbert looking for only bottoms. And of course my favorite is Colbert trailing and blackmailing the detective Cooper sends to spy on her. Herman Bing has the best supporting role in the film as that selfsame, flustered detective.

I've often wondered how back in the day Hollywood could get away with casting so many people who are non-French in a film like this. Of course Cooper is an American and Colbert of the cast is the only one actually of French background. Though David Niven is charming as always, having him be a Frenchman is ludicrous, he is sooooooo British.

Nevertheless Bluebeard's Eighth Wife is an enjoyable film and a great example of what was called 'the Lubitsch touch' back in the day.

I have to agree with other reviews I've seen of this movie - despite some funny scenes and good lines, as a whole it just doesn't get off the ground, and Gary Cooper is wrong in the role of the much-married millionaire. Having said that, I love the scene where Claudette Colbert's character, talking about her financial difficulties, says: "Have you ever had a waiter look at you with untipped eyes? And when I ask the elevator boy for the fourth floor, he says 'Yes, Madame' and takes a detour through the basement." A small detail: in one scene Colbert is looking at a book called "Live Alone and Like It" which was an actual best-seller at the time.

It starts in the French Riviera at a dressing department store where an elegant man wants to buy pyjama tops and a woman the bottoms . He is the US multi-millionaire Michael Brandon (Gary Cooper, though miscast , at times ) who tries to marry his eight wife , called Nicole (Claudette Colbert is fine as the beautiful girl who aims to be his eighth) . After learning her multi-millionaire fiancé has already been married seven times , Nicole , daughter of a bankrupted French Marquis (Edward Everett Horton) attempts to tame the egoistic man and he then ends at an asylum . He married in haste and repeated in pleasure!

Problematic comedy and sporadically fun , set in the French Riviera about a spoiled millionaire who attempts to marry the daughter of a penniless marquis , she then decides to control him , as she doesn't want to be only a number in the row of his ex-wives and starts her own strategy to "tame" him . Good for a few laughs , based on the play by Alfred Savoir and American version by Charlton Andrews with a diverting script by prestigious Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder , though providing a wrong sort of discomfort to the closing scenes at a lunatic sanatorium . Adding some scenes justifying Ernst Lubitsch's reputation for his famous ¨Touch¨ , along with adequate as well as evocative musical score by Frederick Hollander . This Lubitsch romp contains a very good main and support cast . Gary Cooper is nice as the millionaire who who can handle money but not wives , as he has a comeuppance coming up from the eighth , though Coop seems out of place as a playboy . Claudette Colbert is perfect as the woman who aims to be his eighth and she then tries to tame him. There's astringent and typecast secondary cast from sympathetic Edward Everett Horton as the broken Marquis De Loiselle , delightful David Niven as Albert De Regnier , Elizabeth Patterson as Aunt Hedwige , Herman Bing as Monsieur Pepinard , Warren Hymer as Kid Mulligan and Franklin Pangborn as snooty Assistant Hotel Manager

The motion picture well photographed by Leo Tover was competently made by master filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch ,though softening the script's acidity, and he had previously directed Gary Cooper in Design for life . Lubitsch was a maestro director of naughty but entertaining comedies who had lots of successes . Lubitsch's breakthrough film came in 1918 with "The Eyes of the Mummy", a tragedy starring future Hollywood star Pola Negri. Also that year he made Carmen (1918), again with Negri, a film that was commercially successful on the international level. His work already showed his genius for catching the eye as well as the ear in not only comedy but historical drama. The year 1919 found Lubitsch directing seven films, the two standouts being his lavish Madame DuBarry (1919) with two of his favorite actors--Negri (yet again) and Emil Jannings. His other standout was the witty parody of the American upper crust, "The Oyster Princess" 1919 . This film was a perfect example of what became known as the Lubitsch styl e, or the "Lubitsch Touch", as it became known--sophisticated humor combined with inspired staging that economically presented a visual synopsis of storyline, scenes and characters. Lubitsch directed a lot of comedies and vintage movies , such as : ¨Heaven can wait¨, ¨That uncertain feeling¨, ¨Ninotchka¨, ¨Bluebeard's eight wife¨, ¨Angel¨, ¨The merry widow¨, ¨The Student Prince¨, ¨So this is Paris¨, ¨Lady Windermere's fan¨, ¨The marriage circle¨, ¨One Arabian night¨, ¨Passion¨, ¨Gypsy blood¨, among others . Rating : 7/10 . Better than average .