Bluebeard
Bluebeard
| 03 May 1902 (USA)
Bluebeard Trailers

A young woman becomes the eighth wife of the wealthy Bluebeard, whose first seven wives have died under mysterious circumstances.

Reviews
Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece
MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.
Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
framptonhollis Like many of the classic films of Georges Méliès, 'Bluebeard' is groundbreaking, surprising, and filled with fun camera tricks and special effects magic, and it is also, no doubt, one of his darkest films. It's one of the earliest horror films ever made, and it gets pretty wild, particularly towards the end in which Méliès just fills the screen with action and suspense and special effects and death and ghosts and so on and so on. The first portion of the film is actually fairly comedic, which makes how bizarre and tense it gets later on all the more surprising, shocking, and uniquely amusing/entertaining. Much of the comedy is in the common vaudevillian and slapstick vein Méliès's films, whether they be science fiction, romance, fantasy, etc., often indulge in. It helps set a tone that is harshly shifted by the end in a very enjoyable and fun way. Of course, it gets better once it becomes a full blown horror film. Images of hanging women and keys that grow and shrink and spirits and an extremely energetic devil come and go and it's surreal and extremely impressive for the time. Méliès experiments with the overlaying of images atop other images, an effect we now take very much for granted, in a very thrilling nightmare sequence, and the jump cut tricks and theatrical bursts of smoke are very much in the vein of many of Méliès's other fantastical shorts.
Hitchcoc In this Melies film, he stays pretty true to the legend. A man who has managed a great fortune, talks another man into giving him his daughter in marriage. She resists, but the financial gains clinch the deal. They have a really interesting wedding feast with huge foodstuffs. Now he takes her into the courtyard and tells her the whole castle is hers, except for the one room. He gives her a key but forbids her to use it. Of course, she does and realizes what her fate is going to be--there are seven women hanging in the room (pretty harsh stuff). Anyway, it is now up to her to be enterprising and survived. The conclusion is a bit scattered, but it's fun anyway.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) It's certainly difficult to make a silent, black-and-white movie about a title character that already has a color in his name. And I have to say Méliès did not fail entirely in his attempt here, but it's still not a really good achievement by any means in my opinion. There was so much going on all the time on the screen in this one that it was actually difficult to follow and only understand the very basic elements of what exactly was happening. This film runs for almost 10 minutes, which was fairly long for that era, but not entirely uncommon for Méliès whose films became longer and longer by 1901. All in all, still I have to say I was not really impressed watching this and I hoped it would be better looking at its IMDb-rating. Not recommended.
tavm Bluebeard is one of Georges Melies' most fascinating films not just in the depiction of how the title character lost his first seven wives but also in a fascinating dream sequence involving keys and vision of those wives from his current one. Melies also became the first filmmaker to use product placement when we see a giant wine bottle of a popular French brand during the wedding preparation. There's lots of comedy in the beginning and plenty of action at the end so there's no shortage of excitement in this nine minute short! Melies was obviously on a roll here but it would be a year before he became world famous with what would be his most popular film: A Trip to the Moon. By all means seek Bluebeard out if you're a Melies enthusiast!