Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Ernst Lubitsch

Writers:

Charles Brackett (screenplay) and
Billy Wilder (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

18 March 1938 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Romance

Tagline:

He married in haste and repeated in pleasure!

Plot:

US multi-millionaire Michael Barndon marries his eight wife, Nicole, the daughter of a broken French Marquis...

Plot Keywords:

Nobility | Beautiful Woman | Sanitarium | Wheelchair | Hotel

Cast

Claudette Colbert	...	Nicole De Loiselle
Gary Cooper	...	Michael Brandon
Edward Everett Horton	...	The Marquis De Loiselle
David Niven	...	Albert De Regnier
Elizabeth Patterson	...	Aunt Hedwige
Herman Bing	...	Monsieur Pepinard
Warren Hymer	...	Kid Mulligan
Franklin Pangborn	...	Assistant Hotel Manager
Armand Cortes	...	Assistant Hotel Manager
Rolfe Sedan	...	Floorwalker
Lawrence Grant	...	Professor Urganzeff
Lionel Pape	...	Monsieur Potin
Tyler Brooke	...	Clerk

Runtime:

85 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | French

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Certification:

Hungary:14 | USA:Approved (PCA #3985) | USA:Passed (National Board of Review) | USA:TV-PG (TV rating) | Finland:K-16

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

François Truffaut has said that Miriam Hopkins was slated to star as Nicole de Loiselle.

Goofs:

Factual errors: When Nicole shuts the door to her part of the apartment to keep Michael out, you can hear her locking it. But throughout the film there is no keyhole or lock visible on either side of her door.

Quotes:

Nicole de Loiselle: I wish someone would tell you what I really think of you.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Holiday (2006)

Soundtrack:

Here Comes Cookie

Colbert and Cooper Shine in Lubitsch's most Under-Appreciated Comedy

There is something about seeing a movie in a good, old-fashioned movie house that adds enormous appeal to every picture. I, fortunately enough, was able to see at Film Forum in New York City a pair of Ernst Lubitsch comedies during their three week tribute to the legendary director. The double feature I attended was a screening of Lubitsch's 1938 comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife and the pre-Code classic Design for Living, neither of which I had seen before. Everything I read of Design for Living praised the film, but I could not find a good review anywhere for Bluebeard's Eighth Wife. Leonard Maltin disliked it.VideoHound, too, gave the comedy a low rating.its IMDB score was not complimentary.and Pauline Kael (not a great surprise) blasted the film in her scathing review. So, when I went into the city that day I was expecting to enjoy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife only slightly and love Design for Living completely. Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (which was showing first) began, as the eccentrics who populate the cinema took their seats and the thirties music subsided. `Adolph Zukor presents Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper in Ernst Lubitsch's Bluebeard's Eighth Wife,' the title card read. Then the picture opened with a hilarious scene: Cooper wants to buy a pair of pajama tops, but he doesn't want any part of the bottoms! He gets into a squabble with the clerk, who seeks the help of his higher bosses, and their seems to be no end to the argument. Enter Claudette Colbert, one of thirties cinema's most beautiful, charming, and talented personalities. `I'll take the bottom,' she kindly intercedes. And there you have perhaps screwball comedies finest `meet cute' ever. The film kept my interest wonderfully.I found myself laughing almost constantly. When Colbert discovers, just before a family portrait is taken, that her groom-to-be has been married seven times, the entire theatre broke into histerics. When she bargains for money immediately after she gets over her shock, the laughs (which still haven't ceased) intensify. And Edward Everett Horton milked some hilarious reactions out of the script as well. When Cooper takes inspiration from Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in disciplining his wife by slapping her in the face, I could not control my laughter when she slapped him back. And the drunk scene with the scallions is one of Claudette Colbert's funniest comic scenes. The greatest comic moment of the film came when Colbert highers a boxer to `teach her husband a lesson.' In pure screwball fashion, he knocks out the wrong man, instead putting her friend David Niven into a cold sleep. He awakes as Cooper is arriving. In order to cover up the situation, Colbert herself, in a moment of strong sexiness, puts her fist up to Niven, asks: `Where did that man hit you? Here? Right here? Right here?' and then BAM! knocks him out again! The film was wonderful, from beginning to end it was a perfect delight. I loved Design for Living, too, though I dare say I think for sheer laughs and entertainment Bluebeard's Eighth Wife was the better and more enjoyable film. There is some charm of seeing a vintage film on the large screen. And in the presence of others laughing, one feels more comfortable doing so himself. That is, perhaps, why I felt the way I did about Bluebeard's Eighth Wife.