Review #899: Blue Beard (1901)

Title: Blue Beard
Year: 1901
Director: Georges Melies
Country: France
Language: N/A

Early cinema had a "blink and you miss it" run-time. Some of the 1890's pictures I've reviewed lasted less than 30 seconds start to finish. It's hard to review those kind of films, because even though they may be entertaining, we didn't see all that much in terms of story. By the beginning of the 20th Century filmmakers would challenge themselves to create longer and more elaborate pictures. Georges Melies, whom I've written a great amount of, would round his films to about 10 minutes.

In this, our title character marries for the eight time, but things go sour when the new bride finds out about her husband's seven other wives. 

Blue Beard is an odd "fairytale" wherin lies some quite shocking scenes; I doubt much of this would have been suitable during the strict Hays code of the Golden Age of Hollywood just three decades later. In one part of the film Blue Beard's wife finds his other wives hanging from hooks and dripping from blood! When the deranged husband returns from his trip and finds out what his wife has discovered, she vows to kill her too.

The film is real dark, possibly inspired by the real murders of the French aristocracy at the time. It has been speculated, particularly by folklore writer Wilhelm Grimm, that the method of wives' executions would be keeping in line with the dastardly deeds of real life figure Elizabeth Bathory. With some exaggerated broad acting and elaborate costumes Melies saves this from being merely a bleak film into a very dark comedy. I personally didn't find the film that funny, but evidence shows 1900's France was into this twisted barrel of laughs. 

It's unfortunate that we don't have the hand coloured version of Blue Beard, as the villain doesn't quite stand out as much in black & white. Melies film is quite a memorable one, even if its humour may be lost on modern audiences. It is dark, poetic, and fits the Grimm fairy tale aesthetic quite nicely. One of the better films from the beginning of the 20th Century.