L'ottava moglie di Barbablu

An Ernst Lubitsch comedy, co-scripted by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, which has always been generally dismissed by critics and fans alike. Perhaps with the film's reputation as a lesser effort those who sit down to view it will be pleasantly surprised to find it an agreeable affair, anyway.

Gary Cooper plays a seven times married American businessman millionaire who finds that with wife no. 8 (Claudette Colbert) he may have met his match. She has made him agree to a pre nuptial agreement of paying her $100,000 should there be a divorce and then makes him spend much of the marriage unhappy and wishing he hadn't signed that agreement.

While the film is never as funny or clever as the best of Lubitsch, it still has its moments. The film is remembered primarily for the scene in which Colbert and Cooper "meet cute" as they agree to split a pair of pajamas in a department store.

But there are other moments, too, such as the scene in which Cooper, inspired by having just read Taming of the Shrew, bursts out of his room, walks with great macho determination and accompanying soundtrack drum roll down a hallway, enters a room where Colbert stands and slaps her across the face. She responds by slapping him back and Cooper, perplexed by this unexpected turn of events, leaves the room, walks back through that same hallway to his room again and picks up the book to try to figure out what he did wrong.

Like all Lubitsch productions this film has a graceful air of sophistication, with a physical elegance in its sets and photography. Colbert is an old hand at frothy material like this while Cooper, cast against type, plays his role with obvious enthusiasm. He's a far cry from the Cooper we're used to seeing on screen in the scene in which he plays a piano while singing "Looky, looky, looky, Here comes Cookie" to Claudette. The supporting cast is first rate, all of them deft performers: a young David Niven, and old pro character actors Edward Everett Horton and Herman Bing.

English mangling, beer barrel shaped Herman Bing is the unlikeliest of detectives, hired by Cooper to follow his wife to see if she has any lovers. "Don't forget," he tells the millionaire, "we are a first class firm. You will find that out when you get our bill." Recommended as middling production code era Paramount fare.

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 .

Ernst Lubitsch is the guiding hand behind "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife," a 1938 comedy starring Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper. The screenplay was written with a light touch by Brackett and Wilder.

The story concerns a wealthy man, Michael Brandon (Cooper), who meets the very attractive Nicole De Loiselle (Colbert) in a Parisian men's department store. Brandon wants to buy the top of the pajamas, as that's what he sleeps in, but the clerk insists that he buy the entire set. Nicole enters and buys the pants.

Nicole's father (Edward Everett Horton) is a penniless marquis, trying to sell a project to Brandon, who isn't interested. The marquis then attempts to get him to buy a Louis IV bathtub. When he realizes that Nicole is the marquis' daughter, the marquis sees immediately that there is interest and tries to get them together. After all, he's loaded, and the hotel bill is due.

Finally, the couple does become engaged and of course the marquis brings in his entire family at his expense for the wedding. While everyone is gathering for a photograph, some white stuff falls out of Michael's suit. "What is that?" she asks. "It's rice," he says. "Don't you use it at weddings? It's supposed to bring good luck." "Did your bride and groom have good luck?" she asks. "Well," he says, "we had a pleasant six months."

She then finds out he's been married seven times. After renegotiating some sort of prenup he has set up, she goes through with the wedding, but they live separate lives.

For some reason, people put this film in the same category as I Met Him in Paris because they're on the same DVD and they both take place in Paris. I Met Him in Paris is not a Lubitsch film and has some problems. This film has a fine script, zips along at a great pace, and has some wonderful scenes. I Met Him in Paris didn't really pick up until the second part.

Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert are delightful. It's hard to believe that someone like Gary Cooper actually existed - tall, drop dead gorgeous, and a cowboy to boot. Talk about your perfect man. And what a smile.

Colbert is flawless in acting and in beauty - I saw her up close in 1974 and she looked the same as she did in this film. For as much success that she had, I don't think she ever received the credit for her dramatic work that she deserved, though she did for her comedy.

In her last appearance, in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, she played an actual person, Elsie Woodward (name changed in the movie), and people who knew Elsie said Colbert was totally the character.

I don't think this is Lubitsch's best, but it's still delightful. How can you miss with those stars, that director, and those writers.

David Niven has a supporting role as an employee of Brandon's who is also a friend of Nicole's. He's very funny.

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.