Bluebeard (1951)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Bluebeard |
| Country of production | Germany , France , Switzerland |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1951 |
| length | 95 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Christian-Jaque |
| script | Erich Kröhnke , Hans J. Rehfisch , Boris von Borresholm |
| production | Alcina, Paris Union-Film, Zurich Como Film GmbH, Munich |
| music | Werner Eisbrenner , Gérard Calvi |
| camera | Christian Matras |
| cut | Lilian Seng |
| occupation | |
and Georges Chamarat , Aziza Néri , Fernand Fabre , Fred Barius | |
Bluebeard is a German-French-Swiss cinema film from 1951 by Christian Jaque with Hans Albers in the title role. His much younger wife plays Cécile Aubry . The film is based on the fairy tale of the same name by Charles Perrault .
action
Count Amédée, the knight Bluebeard, is a nobleman of old shot and grain. He has just lost his sixth wife and is already planning his seventh marriage. The new girl's name is Aline and she really wants to remain Bluebeard's last wife. What Happened Before: One wife after another mysteriously disappeared after Bluebeard put each of them to the test. Before the knight's departure, all six wives received the key to a mysterious room in the castle, which the spooky husband strictly forbade to enter. As expected, none of the ladies could resist the temptation to satisfy the curiosity. One after the other Bluebeard was promptly moved aside. It is believed that the ladykiller with the shimmering blue beard killed each of them - a bloody rumor that the rascal, serious smeller himself put into circulation.
The landlord's daughter Aline, a doll-faced and delicate-limbed but also resolute and cunning creature who has barely outgrown childhood, looks forward to the day of marriage with some concern and fear. Nevertheless, she agrees to become the next wife of the knight with the great wear and tear of women. After the marriage she moves to Bluebeard's castle. But Aline also has to endure the “key test”. Bluebeard promptly announces another trip and gives Aline the key to that fateful chamber. He impressed on her that she could do what she wanted while he was away, but also that she was not allowed to enter that room. His anger would be terrible if Aline did not follow this one instruction. Fate takes its course when Aline cannot curb her curiosity either and enters the chamber. Here, however, she discovers far fewer scary things than she feared: namely all of her predecessors, whom Bluebeard simply locked away after she passed away. After they are freed, Aline arranges for a royal court to ban the Knight Bluebeard and confiscate his fortune. Now she can marry her real boy of love, the smart and much younger village blacksmith.
Production notes
Bluebeard was made in late winter / spring 1951 (for cost reasons among other things on a farm and a film studio in Thiersee, Austria ) for around two million Deutschmarks in production costs and was shown for the first time in Germany on November 1, 1951 in the Turm-Palast in Frankfurt am Main. The (West) Berlin premiere took place on December 20, 1951. Bluebeard could already be seen in Austria on November 20, 1951.
Otto Lehmann and Herbert Uhlich were production managers . Georges Wakhévitch was responsible for the film construction, the Austrian film construction in the ÖFA studio in Thiersee was created by Wolf Witzemann . Franz Zimmermann took over the German dialogue direction for Christian-Jaque, a Frenchman who was ignorant of German. Christian-Jaque relocated this story to a historically guaranteed mass murderer, the first German-French color film production, clearly more into the comedic - the “missing” six Bluebeard wives are here, unlike in history, all still alive in the end.
About the French version of Barbe-Bleue :
- Here Pierre Brasseur played bluebeard, Jean Debucourt played steward , Jeanne Morlet played wet nurse and Robert Arnoux played Matthes. Cécile Aubry was seen in both language versions. To do this, she had to take language lessons for up to ten hours a day. All other actors were involved in both versions. The script for the French version was written by André-Paul Antoine , Jean Bernard-Luc , Christian-Jaque and Henri Jeanson (dialogues). Louis Wipf and Marcel Bertrou were hired as production managers. Jacques Desagneaux did the editing. This version started, depending on the source, on September 28 or October 4, 1951 in Paris and was also included as a festival contribution to the XII. International Venice Film Festival (August 20 to September 10, 1951) and the II International Film Festival of Punta del Este (Uruguay) (January 10 to 31, 1952).
Reviews
In its issue of November 7, 1951, Der Spiegel found: “With rolling throats and flashing eyes, Bluebeard Hans Albers maintains his six-fold reputation as a woman murderer until the curiosity of his seventh exposes him as a murderous impostor: Fritten Cécile Aubry discovers her six predecessors in the Basement left. Bluebeard's revenge for this exposure - the execution of all seven - is drowned in a fairytale turbulent 'that ends well - all well'. Director Christian Jaque used Gallic esprits, German humor and a new Belgian color film process. The result was a new mixed film type, half fairy tale parody, half historical scary ham. Albers-Aubry contrasts charmingly in a German-French joint production, old Albers rival Kortner shines as a quiet villain. The audience finds Cécile Aubry's German pronunciation delightfully silly. "
In the lexicon of the international film it says: “The film, staged by Christian-Jacques ... a bit too clumsy, gave the fairy tale a cabaret punchline and vice versa: The seventh wife of Count von Salvers, the landlady's daughter Anne, found her predecessors in the forbidden room alive before; carefully locked up as abdicated wives. "
Individual evidence
- ^ Der Spiegel of March 14, 1951
- ↑ ibid.
- ^ Alfred Bauer: German Feature Film Almanach. Volume 2: 1946–1955, p. 173. Munich 1981
- ↑ Bluebeard on Der Spiegel, 45/1951
- ↑ Bluebeard. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 3, 2019 .
Web links
- Bluebeard in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Bluebeard at filmportal.de
- Report in Der Spiegel , issue 11/1951