Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

1938

1h 25m

IMDb RATING

7.0/10

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29 Images

Comedy

Romance

American multi-millionaire Michael Brandon marries his eighth wife, Nicole, the daughter of a broken French Marquis. But she doesn't want to be only a number in the row of his ex-wives and starts her own strategy to tame him.

Directors

Ernst Lubitsch

Writers

Charles Brackett(screenplay by)

Billy Wilder(screenplay by)

Alfred Savoir(theatre play by)

Stars

Claudette Colbert

Gary Cooper

Edward Everett Horton

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Videos1

Trailer
Watch Blaubarts achte Frau - Trailer (Englisch) HQ

Photos29

Top cast

Claudette Colbert

Nicole De Loiselle

Gary Cooper

Michael Brandon

Edward Everett Horton

Marquis De Loiselle

Albert De Regnier

Aunt Hedwige

Monsieur Pepinard

Kid Mulligan

Assistant Hotel Manager

Armand Cortes

Assistant Hotel Manager

Floorwalker

Professor Urganzeff

Monsieur Potin

Clerk

Ex-Chauffeur (uncredited)

Gino Corrado

Waiter Arranging Furniture (uncredited)

Joseph Crehan

American Tourist (uncredited)

George Davis

Maurice - Second Porter (uncredited)

Mariska Aldrich

Nurse at Door (uncredited)

Directors

Ernst Lubitsch

Writers

Charles Brackett(screenplay by)

Billy Wilder(screenplay by)

Alfred Savoir(theatre play by)

All cast & crew

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User reviews1

Review

Featured review

6/10

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife was the first of two collaborations between director Ernst Lubitsch and then up-and-coming screenwriter Billy Wilder. The film, all style and surface, is more Lubistch than Wilder, but the script co-written by Wilder and Charles Brackett (a tandem that would create, among others, The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard) lends itself perfectly to the famous 'Lubistch touch' — the German filmmaker’s characteristic shrewd and methodical humor. For Lubitsch, making laugh is like making love, and he isn’t the slightest bit interested in instant gratification; in fact, his approach is the comic equivalent of Hitchcock's definition of suspense. Michael (Gary Cooper) suffers from insomnia; Nicole (Claudette Colbert), whom he meets at the beginning of the story in the store where he goes to buy a pijama shirt (but no pants, which itself to an elaborately humorous visual gag), recommends “Professor Urganzeff's method ... take a long word, like 'Czechoslovakia' ... While you spell it backwards, you stretch and yawn between each letter … You only have to worry about 'slovakia.' By the time you get to "Czech" you will be fast asleep." The second half of the film actually takes place in Czechoslovakia, where we finally get the real punchline to a joke that Lubitsch set up some half-hour ago (and to top it off, near the end of the movie we find out that there really is a Professor Urganzeff). Michael is a 'serial husband'; marriage is such a revolving door for him that the suit he wears to his most recent wedding still has rice on it from the previous ceremony. Nicole is horrified to learn that Michael has been married seven times previously and calls off the wedding, much to her father's dismay. Michael explains that he gives each of his wives a prenuptial agreement that guarantees $50,000 a year for life if they divorce. Nicole agrees to marry for double that amount, and proceeds to apply withhold sex (not in so many words, of course) to precipitate a divorce and because otherwise "it wouldn't be fair to my next husband." As usual, Lubitsch knows that 'love' is not the stuff of drama but of farce, and that lovers are not so much to be pitied as ridiculed; on the other hand, he has a sincere appreciation for his characters, who are like little children, and he ultimately laughs with them, and not at them.

tmdb2803902315 Sep, 2022