Edgar G. Ulmer's BLUEBEARD (1944)

[Dewey1960]

The queasy hybrid genre concoction that is Edgar G. Ulmer's BLUEBEARD (1944), an unholy marriage of film noir and horror, will air once again on TCM this Monday, May 5.

Those unfamiliar with the pleasures to be found in the demented visual poetry of Edgar G. Ulmer, whose most notorious film, DETOUR (1945) has fascinated cineastes the world over for decades, will find much to enjoy in BLUEBEARD.

Emerging from PRC (Producer's Releasing Corporation), the same poverty row studio responsible for DETOUR (as well as several other Ulmer classics) it tells the haunting story of Gaston Morrell, a Parisian artist and puppeteer (magnificently played by John Carradine) who, after painting the portraits of beautiful women, finishes the job by strangling his models to death. Morrell seems genuinely tortured by this hideous compulsion but in true noir fashion, is powerless to do anything about it. The problem becomes even more complicated when he falls in love with Lucille (Jean Parker), a beguiling young seamstress who seems fated to become Morrell's next victim.

Filmed in one week on the dank and murky back lots of poverty row, BLUEBEARD is a prime example of Ulmer's peculiar genius for turning nearly nothing into something of profound and lasting beauty. Creating a brilliantly stylized Paris under such financially limiting conditions was pair pour le cours for Ulmer and his production designer (and uncredited cinematographer) Eugen Schufftan. Schufftan had worked some fifteen years earlier with Ulmer on MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG (PEOPLE ON SUNDAY) (30) and would do so again on STRANGE ILLUSION (45), CLUB HAVANA (45) and THE WIFE OF MONTE CRISTO (46) --- all for PRC. Among the many other films photographed by Schufftan are G. W. Pabst's L'ATLANTIDE (32), Marcel Carne's LE QUAI DES BRUMES (PORT OF SHADOWS) (38), Rene Clair's IT HAPPENED TOMORROW (44), Robert Rossen's THE HUSTLER (61) and LILITH (64) and Jack Garfein's SOMETHING WILD (61). Clearly it is no accident that BLUEBEARD achieves such a distinctly expressionistic look and feel; it is the product of committed artists whose work, before and after, establish them as supreme cinematic stylists.

BLUEBEARD was produced by poverty row pioneer Leon Fromkess who would achieve additional notoriety in the 1960s as the producer of two of Samuel Fuller's most provocative noir films, SHOCK CORRIDOR (63) and THE NAKED KISS (64).

And finally, it has often been noted that John Carradine cited BLUEBEARD as his favorite role in a long and prolific career. It is easy to understand why. He rarely, if ever, had the opportunity to be so prominently featured at the center of a film, one that would allow him to channel his obsessively melodramatic histrionics into a character that blended so perfectly with his environment. A performance as mesmerizing as the film itself.

[Ollie]

I probably started giving Carradine my serious consideration sometime in the '80s when I paid attention to MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE. My reviews of his performance always sounded soured and bitter, something like, "How can a film FILLED with hateful villains like Lee Marvin and Lee Van Cleef get yet another poison-pill delivered by John Carradine?!!" I mean, there really isn't a phase of that film without a great and hate-able villain! Even a small speech scene!

I paid more and more attention to Carradine's films and knowing his fondness for BLUEBEARD made me find it and give it an understanding view of Carradine's regard. Only in the last 5 or so years, when Ulmer's films have been more available on DVD, have I paid attention to Ulmer's work.

I like so many factors to this film, and while I don't voluntarily re-watch it often, I'd love to see it on the big-screen. I think a lot of folks would enjoy it, too. Carradine is a favorite actor who, like Cushing and Michael Gough, seems to get me to donate a higher level of regard and acceptance of any film they're in. It's like I agree - before seeing it - that I'm probably going to feel sympathetic toward one of them, hate one of them and even cheer when one of their characters eventually 'gets it in the end'.

I don't know why I am always wanting to see BLUEBEARD and PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY together, in close time proximity, of each other.

[ChiO]

Wonderful write-up, Dewey, on my #2 Ulmer film (DETOUR, of course, is #1 even though I have a real soft spot for ST. BENNY THE DIP).

Recently, I finally got around to buying PEEPING TOM, my favorite Powell film. Some night -- soon -- when everyone else here is soundly asleep, my double-feature will be BLUEBEARD and PEEPING TOM.

[MikeBSG]

Speaking of seeing "Bluebeard" and "Picture of Dorian Gray" close together, I think that seeing "Bluebeard" and 1944's "The Lodger" close together would be interesting. I feel that "Bluebeard" is almost something of a critique of Brahm's film.

Also, parts of Tim Burton's "Sweeny Todd" made me think of "Bluebeard." Todd's shop, with the big windows, looked a lot like Carradine's apartment in "Bluebeard."

[moira finnie]

Did anyone catch the earlier Edgar Ulmer movie on TCM: Girls in Chains (1943)?

Somehow, Mr. Ulmer, handed a surefire title by the production chief of lowly PRC, managed to wrest a little over an hour of entertainment documenting the more prurient and less savory aspects of correction facility reform while touching on those "eternal themes" of the good girl gone bad, (poor, bedraggled Arline Judge, who'd seen better days), those oddly masculine reformatory matrons, and of course, lots of seething passions among the gals in stir. Pretty tame now, maybe, (and frankly quite laughable), but pretty vivid stuff given the Production Code restrictions, and all done seven years before Caged (1950) dealt with the topic seriously and entertainingly and on a much larger budget, and decades before Jonathan Demme's Caged Heat mined the topic of how men like to imagine women behave in the pen.

[Ollie]

So, let's see... now I've got BLUEBEARD and THE LODGER for a few weeks from now, and then I'll put in another note with BLUEBEARD saying PEEPING TOM as my 2nd Feature.

Interesting. I know DORIAN GRAY is strictly a costume-thing. LODGER and PEEPING have more substantative connections.