Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

 

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett from a play by Alfred Savoir
Starring Gary Cooper, Claudette Colbert, Edward Everett Horton, David Niven
IMDB Entry

Billy Wilder is one of the giants of film, one of the first writer-directors.* He often collaborated, first with Charles Brackett and later with I.A.L. Diamond. Bluebeard's Eighth Wife was the first of his collaborations with Brackett and an odd take on a romantic comedy.

Michael Brandon (Gary Cooper) is an American millionaire who insists on getting his way. He shows this in a store, where he insists on buying just the top of a set of pajamas. The store won't budge until a passing woman named Nicole (Claudette Colbert) offers to buy the bottoms. All is settled and they go their separate ways. Brandon later insists on getting a different room in his hotel because of his insomnia and when shown it, the previous resident, the Marquis de Loiselle (Edward Everett Horton) is in the bed despite being evicted from non-payment. Brando sees that de Loiselle is wearing the pajama bottoms that Nicole has bought and learns she is his daughter. He decides he wants to marry her. Nicole already has a platonic relationship  with Albert De Regnier (David Niven) who turns out to work for Brandon. Brandon romances Nicole and it blows hot and cold until she finally falls in love with  him.

There are a couple of snags. The Marquis is a small-time con artist and sees this as a way to pay off his debts. But the bigger snag is that Brandon has been married. Seven times before. A couple of his exes have died, but most divorced him. Nicole is appalled and refuses to go through with the marriage, but her father insists she does so he's not arrested.  Brandon offers a prenup** that will pay Nicole $100,000 -- twice what his other wives are getting -- if they divorce. Nicole marries Brandon, but keeps her distance from her husband.

The movie is a tug of war as the two spouses fall in and out of love.

The movie was directed by Ernst Lubitsch and has his trademark touch and hints of sex that push the Production Code without actually crossing the line.  There are many good touches and jokes.

Gary Cooper is a fine actor, but really not a romantic leading man. In his best work, any romance is secondary and it just doesn't seem right to be at center stage, though he makes a good effort. Claudette Colbert does have a knack for this sort of film and is fun to watch. Edward Everett Horton is also cast in a different type of role than usual, but he's not really convincing as a con man.

The film was a disappointment at the box office, possibly because Cooper was miscast. Still, Wilder and Brackett were a wildly successful pairing, with thirteen films together and two Oscars.

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*The great Preston Sturges preceded him as a writer-director in Hollywood, though Wilder had co-directed a film before coming to America.

**It's not called that in the movie, but it has the same effect.

The Bigamist

 

(1953)
Directed by Ida Lupino
Written by Collier Young, Lawrence B. Marcus, Lou Schor
Starring Edmond O'Brien, Ida Lupino, Joan Fontaine,  Edmund Gwenn
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During the studio days, women were rarely allowed to direct. One of those who bucked the prejudice and who made several films was Ida Lupino. Lupino is best known today for her starring role opposite Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra, the film that made Bogart Bogart. But she liked the idea of being in charge of a film and thought directing was more interesting than acting. Eventually, she formed her own production company so she could do that and one of her better films was The Bigamist.

Harry and Eve Graham (Edmond O'Brien and Joan Fontaine) wish to adopt a child and apply to Mr. Jordan  (Edmund Gwenn) at an agency. Jordon investigates to see if they are truly fit parents. The Grahams run a business with branches in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and Harry often spends time in LA when Eve stays home. Jordan, who gets some odd vibes from Harry, goes to Los Angeles and tracks him down to an apartment. While talking outside, a baby cries. Jordon follows and finds that Harry has a son and is also married to Phyllis Martin (Ida Lupino).

Harry explains what happened. Lonely and bored in LA, he takes a bus tour of the stars' homes, where he meets Phyllis. They start to date and when she becomes pregnant, he marries her. His plan was to adopt a child with Eve and then divorce her, but Jordan will have nothing to do with it.

Edmond O'Brien plays the part very sympathetically. He is a decent man and want to do the right thing, but things spiral out of his control. Ida Lupino also makes Phyllis very sympathetically. She doesn't know that Harry is married, of course, but tries to do the right thing herself, refusing to trap Harry into marriage. Joan Fontaine is also strong as Eve, who dives into the business -- neglecting Harry -- when she learns she can't have children.

Edmund Gwenn is, of course, great. I've yet to find him in a bad movie, and he is representative of the law and of society, who understands Harry's behavior, even though he disapproves of it strongly.*

The film was produced by the Filmakers  Inc. Lupino formed it with her then-husband Collier Young,*  a special project to allow her to overcome  sexism and direct and produce her own films. They produced a dozen of them, with Lupino directing five.***

Lupino continued to direct and act as time went by, moving to television as movie gigs became hard to get. In The Bigamist, she became the only woman to director during the studio system years to direct herself. 

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*One minor joke is that, while touring the houses of the stars, the driver shows Edmund Gwenn's house and mentions his role in Miracle on 34th Street. It looks like the tour showed actual houses of stars of the time.

**Young later produced Ironside and Wild Wild West. 

***She also wrote and acted in some of them.

Perfect Murders (Crimes Perfait) (TV)

 

(2017-2023)
Starring Isabel Gélinas, Arthur Mazet, et al.
IMDB Entry

My local library offers Hoopla as a service to patrons where you can borrow books and video on your library card. That was how I stumbled upon Perfect Murders*, an interesting addition to the detective genre.

Its structure is similar to Columbo: we first see the meticulously planned murder take place. The police are called in to investigate. Like Columbo, the detective latches onto the clues until they prove what happens, but one twist is that the motive is not revealed until the end. The police are often quite blunt as to who they suspect, but they have to add up the clues.

Another twist is that there are multiple detectives. I have trouble keeping them straight, partly because the show is a French/Belgium co-production and they are all unfamiliar.** They are all nicely drawn, smart detectives, with interesting outside lives. The one that stood out best for me was Agnès Gélinas (Isabel Gélinas) and Thibaud (Arthur Mazet). Agnès refuses to used computers or cell phones, and has two husbands. Thibaud is more straitlaced and a bit nonplussed by her attitudes, but she is a crackerjack detective.

This doesn't give short shrift to the other detectives, all of whom have their own quirks, but the multiple detectives do make it hard to keep them straight.

The plots are cleverly done and the motives, once revealed, are cleverly constructed. 

Read my novel, The Cadaver Princess, a tale of body snatchers in early Victorian London.

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*The French title translates to "Perfect Crimes," so I think they decided to jazz it up for English speaking audiences.  Of course, the crime is usually a murder, but not always.

**The show is in French with subtitles.

Green for Danger

(1946)
Directed by Sidney Gilliat
Written by Sidney Gilliat, Claud Gurney from a novel by Christianna Brand
Starring Alastair Sim, Trevor Howard, Sally Gray, Rosamund John, Judy Campbell
IMDB Entry

Alastair Sim achieved filme immortality for his definitive version of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. But, of course, he didn't come out of nowhere and his first lead film role was in the mystery Green for Danger.

It's during the Blitz and England is being plagued by attacks by the V-1* jets. After one attack, the local postman is badly injured. While they operate on him, he dies. One of the nurses, Sister Bates (Judy Campbell) claims he was murdered and immediately after, she is stabbed to death. Inspector Cockrill (Sim) investigates and decides that the postman was also murdered.  The suspects are all those in the operating room, including Dr. Barnes (Trevor Howard) who doesn't like how Cockrill is handling the investigation. The murderer is eventually revealed, but with a surprising twist.

Overall, a decent British cozy mystery. I'm dubious about the timeline, but the motive is interesting. Sim plays Cockrill as a major wiseass who rubs everyone the wrong way in getting to the bottom of things he is a softer version of the pre-ghosts Ebeneezer Scrooge. Trevor Howard was the epitome of the stiff-upper-lip Englishman, often playing military officers. Sally Gray play Nurse Linley, who is used as bait to trap the killer.

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*Called "doodlebugs" by the Brits. They were a pulse jet that made a buzzing sound as they flew overhead. If you heard the buzz, you were safe, but when it stopped, it meant the V-1, out of fuel, would fall and destroy. It caused more damage than the rocket-powered V-2 because it would fall onto the surface, while a V-2 would bury itself and dampen the explosion.

Chuck Rothman's novel, "The Cadaver Princess," is available from Amazing Stories Selects.