BLUEBEARD (1944)

Product Information

In one version of the story, Bluebeard is a wealthy and powerful nobleman who has been married six times to beautiful women who have all mysteriously vanished. When he visits his neighbor and asks to marry one of his daughters, they are terrified. After hosting a wonderful banquet, the youngest decides to be his wife and goes to live with him in his rich and luxurious palace in the countryside, away from her family. The movie has elements that make it interesting and artistic, the focus on painting style, the accomplished and beautiful puppet show. It becomes fairly clear that this movie should have been called The Puppetmaster... that kind of "just missed the mark" moment mars many elements of this film. It starts with the title BLUEBEARD, which is bandied about, but never followed up on, and continues. THE PUPPETMASTER would have been a great premise and title for this film that could have unified it. Warner, Marina (1995). From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales And Their Tellers. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 261. ISBN 0-374-15901-7.

Bluebeard", a fairy tale (KHM 62a, dropped from later editions) collected by The Brothers Grimm in Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM) (1812) [39] Secret Beyond the Door, a 1948 contemporary adaptation directed by Fritz Lang, starring Michael Redgrave and Joan Bennett There are a Few Moments of Antiquated Theatrics, surely by Intent, of Over-Heated Displays that seem to Fit Right In this Oddly Staged Film.All Paris is frightened by the murders attributed to "Bluebeard". Modiste Lucille ( Jean Parker) is introduced to Gaston Morrell ( John Carradine), a puppeteer and painter, by her friend. They are attracted to each other, and she accepts a commission to design some costumes for his puppets. Guiterrez, Anna (2017). Mixed Magic: Global-local dialogues in fairy tales for young readers. Amsterdam/Philidelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Jungian psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés refers to the key as "the key of knowing" which gives the wife consciousness. She can choose to not open the door and live as a naive young woman. Instead, she has chosen to open the door of truth. [15]

Tatar further theorized in a later article that the apparent mismatch between Orientalist illustrations and the story's European origin stemmed from the violent plot clashing with the prim morals of society at the time, writing "After all, it’s much more comforting for the French reader to think of such marital discord and violence as having taken place long ago and far away, rather than at home in today’s France." [33] Kelly Faircloth also noted this discrepancy, citing the illustrations as "pushing the whole disquieting tale into the geographic and cultural distance". [34] Tatar, Maria (2017). Beauty and the Beast: Classic Tales About Animal Brides and Grooms from Around the World. New York: Penguin Books. p.190. ISBN 978-0143111696.More uncommonly, these Orientalist themes sometimes extended to the text itself, with rewrites moving the setting from the French countryside to a Middle Eastern city such as Baghdad and giving the wife the Arabic name "Fatima", though Bluebeard and the wife's sister Anne often contradictorily retained their European names. New retellings of the story contained Orientalist themes as late as 1933. [24] [35] [36] Bluebeard is featured in Scary Tales, produced by the Discovery Channel, Sony and IMAX, episode one, in 2011. (This series is not related to the Disney collection of the same name.) Landru (titled Bluebeard in the U.S.), a 1963 French drama directed by Claude Chabrol starring Charles Denner, Michèle Morgan, and Danielle Darrieux Juliette, or Key of Dreams, a 1951 French film based on the 1930 play of the same name, in which a main character is directly inspired from Bluebeard Aoki Hakushaku no Shiro" ("The Blue Marquis' Castle"), a song by Sound Horizon, on the album Märchen

In The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy, the story of Bluebeard is referred to in Chapter 18, with Sir Percy's bedroom being compared to Bluebeard's chamber, and Marguerite to Bluebeard's wife. [71] Crimson Peak, a 2015 Gothic horror film, has plot similarities to the tale of Bluebeard in that a woman is taken to her husband's castle where he hides a dark, forbidden secret. The TV series Grimm, episode 4, season 1, "Lonely Hearts", is based on Bluebeard. The antagonist is a serial rapist who keeps all of his (living) victims in a secret basement room.The fairy tale of Bluebeard was the inspiration for the Gothic feminine horror game Bluebeard's Bride by Whitney "Strix" Beltrán, Marissa Kelly, and Sarah Richardson published by Magpie Games. It is centered around the premise of the fairy tale with players acting out emotions and thoughts from the shared perspective of the Bride, each taking on an aspect of her psyche. [78] The tale inspired the plot of hidden object game Dark Romance 5: Curse of Bluebeard, by developer DominiGames. Tatar, Maria (October 25, 2021). "How a Bloody French Fairy Tale Explains France's Sexual Politics". Foreign Policy . Retrieved July 23, 2023. BBC Radio 4 aired a radio play from 2014 called Burning Desires written by Colin Bytheway, about the serial killer Landru, an early 20th-century Bluebeard. [81] da Silva, Francisco Vaz (2010). "Review of Tales of Bluebeard and His Wives from Late Antiquity to Postmodern Times". Marvels & Tales. 24 (2): 358–360. JSTOR 41388968.