alr

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

Screening on Film
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch.
With Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Edward Everett Horton.
US, 1938, 35mm, black & white, 80 min.
Print source: Universal

Lubitsch’s last film for Paramount came on the heels of the failure of Angel and the realization, by both filmmaker and studio, that the wilder screwball comedy was supplanting the sophisticated and subtle “Lubitsch touch.” Lubitsch turned from stalwart screenwriter Samson Raphaelson to the emerging team of Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett for a script about a pair of oddball millionaires who “meet cute” and eventually realize they’ve fallen for each other. By the standards of all but Lubitsch’s own previous sublime achievements and the very best screwball comedies, Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife is a fine and funny film, but its failure to find an audience forced Lubitsch to retool his approach, preparing the way for the innovative comedic melodramas of his final years.

Part of film series

Read more

That Certain Feeling... The Touch of Ernst Lubitsch

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more

António Campos and the Promise of Cinema Novo

Read more
sepia photo of Artie Freedman in silhouette with a video camera at show

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a mausoleum that looks like a miniature Spanish cathedral, next to a variety of others, against an evening sky

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada

Read more
a double-exposed image that includes a 16th century Russian man being fed grapes by another amid decadent decor

Wings of a Serf

Read more
a close-up of a Bissau-Guinean woman wearing a scarf on her head and looking directly at the camera with a slight smile

Le Dépays + Sans soleil