Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13390 in VHS
• Released on: 1995-03-28
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 85 minutes

Customer Reviews

One of Colbert's 5 best comedies !
When I saw this movie, I didn't understand why it is considered as one of lubitsch's worst comedies by the American critics! I couldn' t stop laughing (especially during the excellent scene of the "ognions kiss"). It is far better than most of the 30's screwball comedies (but of course, it is not as genial as Lubitsch's masterpieces like "To be or not to be" or "Trouble in paradise"). Critics are always difficult with a genius like Lubitsch. Watch it, you will spend a good time ! 4 1/2 stars !

CLAUDETTE & GARY.
A wealthy American who has had many ex-wives, walks into a department store on the Riveria to buy pajamas and walks out with a girl he determines to make into his eighth wife. The famed sophisticated comedy direction Ernst Lubitsch felt he could take Cooper out of his realm and make him into a sophisticated gentleman. Gary may have been one off-screen, but he couldn't give such an illusion on screen A Mr. Deeds, yes, but unfortunately not the hero of this piece. Cooper and Colbert work well together, despite this handicap and Lubitsch sprinkled fun throughout. However, the moviegoing public turned their all-knowing thumbs down at this little lark in 1938 and it lost money. It's not a bad depression-era comedy but it has a dickens of a time trying to pass off Gary as multi-marrying multi-millionaire. Put seven divorced wives behind Mr. Deeds, each with a $50,000 a year settlement, and it becomes pretty hard to believe that he's just a small boy at heart - which was precisely the charm of Paramount's gangling hero..........A slim but funny little comedy has Colbert and Cooper race happily through each unexpected episode. Coop is not altogether at ease in the role of a cosmopolitan banker, but he saves the part from being a caricature, and when the action permits, he cuts loose with splendid comic results.

A Near Miss
BLUEBEARD'S EIGHTH WIFE is a near-miss screwball farce. Claudette Colbert's undoing of her playboy husband Gary Cooper has some wonderfully humorous moments. But the parts are greater than the whole. However, if you watch this as a forerunner to the Cooper/Wilder masterpiece, LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, made 20 years later, it is an extremely fascinating film. Wilder made LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON as a tribute to his idol, Ernst Lubitsch, who directed this. Cooper's jaded, aging roue works far better in AFTERNOON than here in BLUEBEARD, perhaps because screwball farce wasn't the right style for the plotline. That said, it is very much worth watching. It just isn't top-drawer, that's all.