Claudette Colbert

Gary Cooper

Edward Everett Horton

David Niven

Elizabeth Patterson

Herman Bing

Warren Hymer

Franklin Pangborn

Armand Cortes

Rolfe Sedan

Lawrence Grant

Lionel Pape

Tyler Brooke

Leon Ames

Gino Corrado

Joseph Crehan

George Davis

Mariska Aldrich

Lenore Aubert

Eugene Borden

Barlowe Borland

Marie Burton

Albert D'Arno

Dorothy Dayton

Jean De Briac

Ray De Ravenne

Sayre Dearing

Paula DeCardo

Blanche Franke

Norah Gale

Pauline Garon

Grace Goodall

Sacha Guitry

Harriette Haddon

Charles Halton

Chuck Hamilton

Olaf Hytten

Barbara Jackson

Lola Jensen

Gwen Kenyon

Harry Lamont

Sally Martin

Joyce Mathews

Harold Minjir

Carol Parker

Albert Petit

John Picorri

Ruth Rogers

Joseph Romantini

Ronald R. Rondell

Amzie Strickland

Harry Tenbrook

Jacques Vanaire

Michael Visaroff

Dorothy White

Gloria Williams

Alex Woloshin

Wolfgang Zilzer

Charles Brackett

Ernst Lubitsch

Billy Wilder

A. E. Freudeman

Travis Banton

Alfred Savoir

William Shea

Robert Usher

Hans Dreier

Leo Tover

William LeBaron

Boris Morros

Farciot Edouart

Eric Locke

Charlton Andrews

John Leipold

Milba K. Lloyd

Don Johnson

Harry D. Mills

Charles Schoenbaum

Adolph Zukor

Werner R. Heymann

Friedrich Hollaender

George Parrish

Comedy

Romance

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

Paramount Pictures

United States of America

English

Français

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.

Blaubarts achte Frau - Trailer (Englisch) HQ

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

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Актёрский состав 58:

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