Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

"He married in haste and repeated with pleasure!"

1938 1h 25m EN

👍

7.0

SOLID

★7.0TMDB · 113

ComedyRomance

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

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

“He married in haste and repeated with pleasure!”

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Cast

Claudette Colbert
Nicole De Loiselle
Gary Cooper
Michael Brandon
Edward Everett Horton
Marquis De Loiselle
David Niven
Albert De Regnier
Elizabeth Patterson
Aunt Hedwige
Herman Bing
Monsieur Pepinard
Warren Hymer
Kid Mulligan
Franklin Pangborn
Assistant Hotel Manager

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Writers: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder
Languages: English, French
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

RUNTIME

Did you know

85 minutes exactly — the "classic feature" runtime most directors aim for.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

ERA

Did you know

88 years old — a genuine piece of film history.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, French.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, shot by Leo Tover. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Werner R. Heymann. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor William Shea shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper and Edward Everett Horton carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "He married in haste and repeated with pleasure!".

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Ernst Lubitsch directs. Leo Tover behind the camera. Werner R. Heymann scores. William Shea cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English, French.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

185 minutes exactly — the "classic feature" runtime most directors aim for.
288 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
3Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, French.
4Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, shot by Leo Tover. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
5Original score by Werner R. Heymann. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
6Editor William Shea shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
7Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper and Edward Everett Horton carry the top of the cast.
8Marketing tagline: "He married in haste and repeated with pleasure!".
9IMDB entry: tt0029929 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
10Classified under 11 themes, including "wife", "department store", "millionaire", "screwball comedy".

The technical file

Cinematography: Leo Tover
Original score: Werner R. Heymann
Editing: William Shea
Costume design: Travis Banton
Runtime: 85 min · 1h 25m
Status: Released
Original language: EN
Certification (US): NR
IMDB: Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)

Also by

Ernst Lubitsch

Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

tmdb280390232022-09-15
★ 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.

Production companies