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

The Cold Heart is More Precious than Diamonds. The Cinema of Graham Greene

Read more

João César Monteiro, Poet-Provocateur

Read more

Marathon '77 All-Night Movie Marathon

Read more

Marie Antoinette and Friends, Three Films by Sofia Coppola

Read more

Nostalgia, A Harvard Undergraduate Cinematheque Program

Read more

The Adventures of Lotte Reiniger

Read more

The Human Condition

Read more

Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema, 1945 – 1960

Read more

Visions of a City, Or A Weekend in San Francisco