Ernst Lubitsch is the guiding hand behind "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife," a 1938 comedy starring Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper. The screenplay was written with a light touch by Brackett and Wilder.The story concerns a wealthy man, Michael Brandon (Cooper), who meets the very attractive Nicole De Loiselle (Colbert) in a Parisian men's department store. Brandon wants to buy the top of the pajamas, as that's what he sleeps in, but the clerk insists that he buy the entire set. Nicole enters and buys the pants. Nicole's father (Edward Everett Horton) is a penniless marquis, trying to sell a project to Brandon, who isn't interested. The marquis then attempts to get him to buy a Louis IV bathtub. When he realizes that Nicole is the marquis' daughter, the marquis sees immediately that there is interest and tries to get them together. After all, he's loaded, and the hotel bill is due.Finally, the couple does become engaged and of course the marquis brings in his entire family at his expense for the wedding. While everyone is gathering for a photograph, some white stuff falls out of Michael's suit. "What is that?" she asks. "It's rice," he says. "Don't you use it at weddings? It's supposed to bring good luck." "Did your bride and groom have good luck?" she asks. "Well," he says, "we had a pleasant six months."She then finds out he's been married seven times. After renegotiating some sort of prenup he has set up, she goes through with the wedding, but they live separate lives.For some reason, people put this film in the same category as I Met Him in Paris because they're on the same DVD and they both take place in Paris. I Met Him in Paris is not a Lubitsch film and has some problems. This film has a fine script, zips along at a great pace, and has some wonderful scenes. I Met Him in Paris didn't really pick up until the second part.Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert are delightful. It's hard to believe that someone like Gary Cooper actually existed - tall, drop dead gorgeous, and a cowboy to boot. Talk about your perfect man. And what a smile. Colbert is flawless in acting and in beauty - I saw her up close in 1974 and she looked the same as she did in this film. For as much success that she had, I don't think she ever received the credit for her dramatic work that she deserved, though she did for her comedy. In her last appearance, in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, she played an actual person, Elsie Woodward (name changed in the movie), and people who knew Elsie said Colbert was totally the character.I don't think this is Lubitsch's best, but it's still delightful. How can you miss with those stars, that director, and those writers.David Niven has a supporting role as an employee of Brandon's who is also a friend of Nicole's. He's very funny.

Sometimes the best experiences are watching movies that are bad but nearly good.That's because movies are all in the same class of languages, meaning they all say different things, but in the same way. So when you watch a movie, in a sense you are watching all the others you have, and in a stranger sense all the movies ever watched by anyone who has had anything to do with this one.That means that when you watch, you make up your own movie out of stuff that isn't necessarily on screen but is in your situation of recalled narratives. In other words, you see it in context of other movies, and especially those that were good. What this means for me is that unless I truly am captured and fall into the story, losing myself, I watch it with an eye to how it could or should have been. That's easier when the movie is quite bad but almost good, and its more effective when the movie is from the 1930s decade when the vocabulary was still malleable. This movie has Cooper in a type of role that Cary Grant mastered, a role where the character is a knowing character, who mugs for the audience and winks at the camera, occasionally stepping out of the role. It isn't what I call folded acting, where these things are done simultaneously, like Tuvan throatsingers. Cooper can't quite get it: he's actually serious. He actually thinks he is playing a rich guy with (for Cooper) complex attributes. His co-star gets it, moving in and out of supporting what the movie needs to work and what her character needs to have her scheme work.In the middle is a reference to "Taming of the Shrew" that has a rather complex generation. The point of that play (if you are a highschooler) is that the wit of the husband is turned on his wife to neutralize her faults. Here, through an equally complex setup, we are introduced to the notion of taking a bit of complex writing (represented by the word "Czechoslovakia") and "reading" it backwards to "enter dreams."Read "Shrew" backwards and you get a wife taming her husband and the husband's excesses are similar to those of Petruchio in the play. Its an extremely rich and promising notion, and you can see Billy Wilder's mind behind it. There's even an end in a place (a crazyhouse) where people believe they are something they are not — and our wayward man gets tamed, literally in a straitjacket.Bur everything is off. Cooper is inadequate as mentioned. The comic idea requires something more deft than the screwball formula which was then already mature. And the script has all sorts of false starts. For instance, there's a commanding wheelchair-bound woman who is head of the wife's family. That family is either impoverished or completely fictitious nobility who live for the dependent scam. We have them in the beginning, the part I believe Wilder influenced the most, but she and they disappear when the mechanics of delivering the "lesson" take over. Then we enter something else, dull and halfwitted, inherited from the previous version.See if you can figure out why Wilder spends so much time on a Louis XIVth bathtub and why that man's death was so important to mention several times.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Years before pre-nuptial agreements became a regular thing, Ernest Lubitsch made a screen comedy on which they are the basis. Bluebeard's Eighth Wife involves Gary Cooper as a multi-millionaire living on the French Riviera who's been married seven times and now marries Claudette Colbert for number eight. But Cooper's a good sport about it, he always settles with his ex-wives for a $50,000.00 a year as per an agreement they sign before marrying him. Sounds like what we now call a pre-nuptial agreement.Of course Claudette wants a lot more than that and she feels Cooper takes an entirely too business like approach to marriage. She'd like the real deal and is willing to go some considerable lengths to get it.Bluebeard's Eighth Wife has some really funny moments, the original meeting of Cooper and Colbert in a men's store where Cooper is insisting he wants only pajama tops and Colbert looking for only bottoms. And of course my favorite is Colbert trailing and blackmailing the detective Cooper sends to spy on her. Herman Bing has the best supporting role in the film as that selfsame, flustered detective.I've often wondered how back in the day Hollywood could get away with casting so many people who are non-French in a film like this. Of course Cooper is an American and Colbert of the cast is the only one actually of French background. Though David Niven is charming as always, having him be a Frenchman is ludicrous, he is sooooooo British.Nevertheless Bluebeard's Eighth Wife is an enjoyable film and a great example of what was called 'the Lubitsch touch' back in the day.

The Lubitsch's Touch is more than ever in this film. Humour at anytime and very subtle. The plot is simple but turned in a delicious way by the director. The film cut is very clever and add to the comic effect. A real piece of comedy that isn't getting so old for a XXIst century spectator. The character are finely acted by Gary Cooper and especially Claudette Colbert so smart and mean with this poor Micheal in the movie. She avoid every traps from her husband and turn the situation to her advantage, very funny. And no problem, with Lubitsch, there is always an Happy end. A film for men too confident with women. Don't let your girlfriend watch this movie...