Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938, Ernst Lubitsch) conveys a certain condition through both thought and emotion. It’s scenario simultaneously ridicules and empowers women. Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife is a marriage screwball comedy that comes on like a carefree swooning rom com but goes down like a psychological horror.
Here I argue that other movies don’t do both. Thought and emotion. In Adaptation (2002, Spike Jonze), Kaufman’s screenplay allows us to think about how adapting a cerebral source into a movie has to compromise because we’re watching a movie that tries to and fails at avoiding the very same pitfall. Irreversible (2002, Gaspar Noé) makes us feel what it’s like to be in love with someone who is everything to you and then losing her which is losing everything. It’s one or the other.
In Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife Lubitsch gets us to think about how marriage is like a business transaction. MICHAEL BRANDON (Gary Cooper) says “Love and business are just the same. You have to gamble. You have to take chances.” (I apologize it’s obnoxious at this point for me to keep repeating this but I’ve always thought the exact same thing. Schopenhauer saying nature doesn’t care about us only for us to reproduce. Nothing’s free.) When Mr. Brandon buys the Louis XIV wash basin NICOLE (Claudette Colbert) sees through him: 60,000 francs is his down payment on me.
Also when Nicole’s father hears she doesn’t want to marry Mr. Brandon and he starts negotiating the aunt calls him out “Are you a father or an auctioneer?” we know what she’s really implying is more like pimp or sex trafficker. But what’s up with right before the second act break how Nicole is repulsed by Michael’s proposition and wants nothing to do with him and then they’re out dancing and she’s swept off her feet? Doesn’t it feels like a reel’s missing? Plot twist. It’s because she’s scamming him.
Here’s the empowering women part. So this rich, arrogant, over-confident American businessman thinks he can come along and meet this cute French woman on the Riviera in a luxury boutique and after meeting her one time, marry her? After he’s already been through 7 marriages and 6 divorces (1 died)? Nicole’s dad (I love Edward Everett Horton in a Lubitsch and he’s in many) gets the deal up to a $100K prenup. Cruel plot twist. No sex. Not on the honeymoon. Not ever. Not even a kiss. No touching. He can buy her but he can’t have her. I love to imagine all of these beautiful young women who some rich guy thinks he can swoop up for a trophy wife taking his money and giving him nothing in return to balance the scales.
Does the scene where Michael is trying to seduce his newlywed bride then resorts to increasingly desperate attempts hint on an elliptical implied attempted rape moment? It’s played cutesy. But when they leave the room and she’s applying iodine to a severe wound she’s inflicted on him by biting him I mean she can only have had to be defending herself for one reason right? That’s what they call the Lubitsch touch.
Act III Michael changes the terms of the business deal. If she’s nice to him he’ll let her have a divorce. But Nicole, not one to acquiesce to defeat has a scheme of her own. She’ll make him think she’s cheating so he’ll divorce her. Spiteful isn’t she? It works though. And yes very screwball of Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife to employ such a sophisticated deception. So Michael has a nervous breakdown and winds up in a sanatorium. And this is a comedy. I love it.
Michael tells Nicole “You made a nervous wreck of me. You tortured me. You took my pride away. My self-respect. And I took it.” He’s literally in a straightjacket because of her. And the climax at this point makes me feel like wow that’s exactly how women make you feel. How marriage makes you feel. How love makes you feel. And Nicole tells Michael she had to break him down. Now that’s an ending. A resolution. The power balance is even. They’re now equals. Partners. She’s no longer a possession, a property. And they live happily ever after. And I buy it. That’s why I love screwball. It supports both my most cynical conclusions about life and my most tender romantic desires. Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife makes me think about how unfairly a man can behave towards a woman, and makes me feel what he goes through unless he’s able to recognize it.
In Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife Lubitsch gets us to think about how marriage is like a business transaction. MICHAEL BRANDON (Gary Cooper) says “Love and business are just the same. You have to gamble. You have to take chances.” (I apologize it’s obnoxious at this point for me to keep repeating this but I’ve always thought the exact same thing. Schopenhauer saying nature doesn’t care about us only for us to reproduce. Nothing’s free.) When Mr. Brandon buys the Louis XIV wash basin NICOLE (Claudette Colbert) sees through him: 60,000 francs is his down payment on me.
Also when Nicole’s father hears she doesn’t want to marry Mr. Brandon and he starts negotiating the aunt calls him out “Are you a father or an auctioneer?” we know what she’s really implying is more like pimp or sex trafficker. But what’s up with right before the second act break how Nicole is repulsed by Michael’s proposition and wants nothing to do with him and then they’re out dancing and she’s swept off her feet? Doesn’t it feels like a reel’s missing? Plot twist. It’s because she’s scamming him.
Here’s the empowering women part. So this rich, arrogant, over-confident American businessman thinks he can come along and meet this cute French woman on the Riviera in a luxury boutique and after meeting her one time, marry her? After he’s already been through 7 marriages and 6 divorces (1 died)? Nicole’s dad (I love Edward Everett Horton in a Lubitsch and he’s in many) gets the deal up to a $100K prenup. Cruel plot twist. No sex. Not on the honeymoon. Not ever. Not even a kiss. No touching. He can buy her but he can’t have her. I love to imagine all of these beautiful young women who some rich guy thinks he can swoop up for a trophy wife taking his money and giving him nothing in return to balance the scales.
Does the scene where Michael is trying to seduce his newlywed bride then resorts to increasingly desperate attempts hint on an elliptical implied attempted rape moment? It’s played cutesy. But when they leave the room and she’s applying iodine to a severe wound she’s inflicted on him by biting him I mean she can only have had to be defending herself for one reason right? That’s what they call the Lubitsch touch.
Act III Michael changes the terms of the business deal. If she’s nice to him he’ll let her have a divorce. But Nicole, not one to acquiesce to defeat has a scheme of her own. She’ll make him think she’s cheating so he’ll divorce her. Spiteful isn’t she? It works though. And yes very screwball of Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife to employ such a sophisticated deception. So Michael has a nervous breakdown and winds up in a sanatorium. And this is a comedy. I love it.
Michael tells Nicole “You made a nervous wreck of me. You tortured me. You took my pride away. My self-respect. And I took it.” He’s literally in a straightjacket because of her. And the climax at this point makes me feel like wow that’s exactly how women make you feel. How marriage makes you feel. How love makes you feel. And Nicole tells Michael she had to break him down. Now that’s an ending. A resolution. The power balance is even. They’re now equals. Partners. She’s no longer a possession, a property. And they live happily ever after. And I buy it. That’s why I love screwball. It supports both my most cynical conclusions about life and my most tender romantic desires. Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife makes me think about how unfairly a man can behave towards a woman, and makes me feel what he goes through unless he’s able to recognize it.
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