Edgar G. Ulmer: A Retrospective Part 3: Bluebeard(1944)

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Aaand, welcome back to Ulmer-thon! In Part 3 of this 4-part retrospective, we will be looking at Ulmer’s second-most beloved offering of his "Big Three" films; PRC’s maniac-in-Paris horror epic Bluebeard(1944).


Quite frankly, there’s some ambiguity as to whether or not this one counts as horror, had anyone but genre legend John Carradine been cast as the titular character it would probably be considered a melodrama or period noir. There’s no real horror elements, even the murders are committed in such a way that they have no frightening or bizarre aspect. Surely the gruesome Perrault story (and which I have had the pleasure of reading in Wolf’s Complete Book of Terror) would work as horror on-screen, but as you will soon see, the title is more metaphorical than literal, and in fact, considering the sympathetic circumstances presented on film, even that’s stretching it considerably! But I guess it does count as horror because it was based off of a script that began at Universal as a vehicle for Boris Karloff, that was turned down for either being sub-par or offensive and sold to PRC(much like the 1946 Rondo Hatton vehicle The Brute Man, which coincidentally, is also as much a noir as it is horror).


Oh well, that’s all irrelevant. The real importance of this film, is that in many ways, much of the conceptual groundwork for Ulmer’s most beloved and popular film, the following year’s Detour, is layed down here, as well as that this film continues what may be a recurring theme in Ulmer’s work, and that lends credence to his reputation as an auteur that has elevated him among much more competent B-directors.

Let it never be said that Ulmer doesn’t know how to make you realize you are watching one of his films. The film opens to bombastic classical music re-scored by PRC’s Franz Waxman; Erdody. The same tune here would be much better used in 1972’s Asylum, here it’s so sped up it’s ear-shattering, and immediately sets up the completely inappropriate Looney Toons mock-dramatic atmosphere of The Black Cat again, uh oh. But at least it’s a fitting menacing tune…then it becomes ludicrously peppy and upbeat. Ladies and gentleman, what we have here is The Black Cat on steroids. Not working for a major studio like Universal, and instead working for a poverty row studio where he was free to throw out all the crap he wanted so long as it met the budget, Ulmer clearly had a little more reign to expand his creativity and go crazy. But whether that bodes well for the film or not remains to be seen….


Let it never be said as well that Ulmer doesn’t know how to grab your attention. First thing we hear after the credits are the bells of Notre Dame tolling in midnight, and then an establishing shot of the sewer, pumping it‘s filthy water into the river Seine. But wait! Pan closer! There’s a dead woman slowly floating in it. Two gendarmes fish her out of the river(this is starting to remind me of Poe’s The Mystery of Marie Roget) and then we dissolve to a shot of a poster being hung up that warns the people to be on the lookout for a modern-day Bluebeard. Then there’s a quick montage before we meet the story’s protagonists; three women named Lucille, Bebette and Constance. Whether they are sisters or roommates will remain unexplained.
 

By the turn of the century, fictional Paris has already seen quite a bit of horrors what with the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Svengali, the Opera Ghost, the Rue Morgue Ape and of course, the mythical Bluebeard, so everyone is naturally on edge. Lucille(Jean Parker) however, shows little fear. One day she and her friends come across a puppet show run by a bizarre man named Gaston Morell(Carradine). Aww how cute!!….they’re playing Faust, where Morell himself performs as Mephisto. Gaston also has his eye on Lucille in a rather lecherous way too. Gee, you don’t think he could be the new Bluebeard do you?
 

Totally not symbolic.

Sure enough, Morell is the killer, as we see from his murder of his assistant when she realizes the truth about him. Apparently, he’s also an artist who kills women who model for his paintings.(Apparently Gaston is an ‘’artist’’ the same way Reed Richards from Fantastic Four is a scientist; he’s a master of all forms of art depending on what the plot calls for. Puppeteer? Check. Painter? Check. Singer? Check. Sculptor? Check. Clothes designer? Check.) His art dealer(Ah! An artist who has an art dealer! Maybe this won’t be so unrealistic after all.), a creepy little man named Lamarte(Ludwig Stossel), doesn’t care however, since Morell’s anonymous paintings bring in lots of money.

Then we get some more drama, a party where Gaston encounters Lucille’s sister Francine, who is engaged to Police Inspector Lefevre(Nils Asther) and some more ham-fisted drama. At this point, one could easily be tempted to turn off the film or write it off as a Black Cat-esque exercise in pretentiousness, but stick around, because when Lefevre hatches a plot to catch Bluebeard, the film suddenly makes an amazing about-face in terms of just about everything and becomes quite good! I’ve seen lots of films with slow-beginnings that pick up, but never have I seen one improve so dramatically in all aspects like this! This first half I’ve reviewed so far is monstrously badly paced, but not because it’s boring however, but because it’s too fast-paced! All the characters are caricatures without any depth, the music is ludicrous, the acting is hammy, scenes like the puppet show drag on waaay too long, and the attempts to be symbolic are ham-fisted and silly at best, embarrassing at worst. Now, it all changes, and Bluebeard becomes amazing. It’s not a shift in tone or anything, just a case of everyone involved with making the picture suddenly deciding to put some real effort in. Yet, it still feels as jarring a turn-about as the scenes in Steckler’s Rat Pfink A- Boo Boo when the titular characters first appear in what was previously a sleazy R-rated crime drama, and turn it into a kid-friendly superhero spoof.

Part of this is because of the characterization of Gaston Morell himself. What with all this devil-imagery and attempts to paint him as the bad guy, we notice something in the scenes where he is confronted by his assistant and kills her, what is it? Vulnerability. Weakness. This is a man who can’t stand being talked down to or criticized, and he loses it when he does. So how will he respond to the trap set for him? Now we’re interested, and amazingly, almost worried for him.

The plan is quite ingenious. Lefevre notices a painting which bears an uncanny resemblance to one of the victims, and the suspicious behavior of Lamarte when he questions him about it just makes him more inquisitive. He decides to set up Francine, herself a trained policewoman, as an heiress going away on a trip who wants her portrait painted and will pay a healthy sum. The greedy Lamarte can’t resist, and sets up Gaston. But Gaston has an ace up his sleeve, he will only paint her if he hides behind a veil and can‘t be seen! The police will be watching as well. I have to say I really like this CSI-1800’s style feel. The plan is pretty ingenious and plausible, but it takes place in an unsophisticated enough time for lots of loopholes to exist, and for every smart move the cops make, Morell makes a smarter one. This is how you keep an audience in suspense. 
 

Morell proves too smart and too stupid for his own good, however. He immediately guesses that Lamarte has set him up, and ends up killing him and Francine, unfortunately, she sees and recognizes him. He flees to Lucille.



Morell then tries to get the seemingly understanding Lucille to hear him out, and tells her how he came to be the next Bluebeard: Once, he was an unsuccessfull, struggling artist who was slowly starving, not for lack of talent, but because of lack of inspiration. One day, he saved a beautiful woman from drowning, took her home, and while she lay in coma or delirium, he made her his muse; did portraits of her, fell in love with her. Then she fled. He became obsessed with finding her, surely she would be grateful to him. He found her, partly through Lamarte; only to discover she was an obnoxious, drunken, mean-spirited whore. In a fit, he strangled her. Guilt-stricken, he tried to forget, blot it out of his mind, but he couldn’t. You see, every time he tried to paint a different girl, no matter how different she was, he would see her….and the feelings of rage would return, and…



But this trauma was brought on because he was naïve, he only thought he was in love with her, now he has kicked the habit, he has found true love in Lucille. She’s the only one to whom he can turn! Surely she’ll understand!!??
 

“You…you killed Francine!!!!”



Yeah, our anti-hero is screwed.



Wow. Just. Wow. Carradine’s performance as Morell, and the character of Morell, are two of the most fascinating of the 1940s. While it’s easy to write him off as just a typical villain with a tragic backstory, something more complex is going on. Morell was not a bad man at all, was he inspired to save the girl who started his psychosis out of lust? No. He did it out of the kindness of his heart. Did he demand or even expect a sexual favor from her in return? Maybe he wanted to at the back of his mind, but so do lots of men who do heroic things, all he principally wanted was to thank her for inspiring him, or check up on her. He was motivated simply by kindness. 
 

Yet, at the same time, Morell becomes truly repulsive when we realize just how aware of his murders and how in-control he actually is. While much of his continued cycle of murder is motivated by Lamarte’s blackmail, he still cannot stop himself from killing women who remind him of the girl even when he is clearly aware that they’re not her. Why?

Much of the problem is how sensitive Morell is. He only sees emotions in extremes, and expresses emotions in extremes, a trait found in many performers. He is also an artist, and like many artists, he wants to express the world in how he sees it, fit it in into molds and archetypes, since art is all about the simplification of forms. But the world changes and people change, there are never any absolutes; which is a problem for artists, because they must deal in absolutes to make their work easier, or be forced to radically alter or discard their existing work, and for an artist, having to destroy or alter their work because it’s irrelevant can be quite an emotional blow.

So when he found the woman, even motivated by true altruism, Gaston saw himself as the tormented young hero, the noble knight. And to him, the girl he rescued; unresponsive, innocent-looking in her delirium, became the paragon of innocence and beauty to him. A model of purity. All reviews I’ve read of the film say he kills her because she mocks him, but in all copies I have seen of the film, there is no dialogue in the scene, only Carradine’s narration. And while she may indeed be mocking him for all we know, she seems to be sincere in offering him sex, and this is where I think the character’s real reason for killing her lies: She has become such a paragon of innocence in his mind that to see her as a sexual being, a bawdy being, and probably a coarse-tounged one, is too much for him. It shatters what he wants her, and him as well, to be. His delusions are shattered, he realizes he can’t fit people into molds and caricatures, which is all his life has been about. His innocence has been destroyed. He can’t respond in any other way; he strangles her in a fit of rage. Perhaps the silly Mephisto-thing is his way of coping as well, now feeling guilty, but at the same time partly feeling he was justified, he casts himself as a vile villain who starts a web of suffering, even though it was he who was a caught in a web, but again, he sees things only in absolutes. And, going back to how he allows himself to get away with it, this becomes really scary, now that he considers himself an evil monster, then by god, he’s going to accommodate himself as such! He already has a henchman who covers up for him and thinks that he’s controlling him….
 

This is a trait that is common in many artists, especially struggling ones like Gaston. Unable to reach instant success, but realizing that they need to put food on the table, they snap when their delusions about the world are shattered and often turn to drugs or give up. I’ve seen it happen a lot. Artist’s like to classify things and fit them into molds, they probably keep casting calls for what their life would be like as a movie. So to imagine someone like Gaston being driven to a murderous rage over finding his angel was a hooker, it’s entirely plausible. In fact, this may just be one of the most realistic portrayals of an artist that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve sat through Frida and Lust for Life, thank you very much. Throwing in the greedy, mob-boss-ish art dealer, while a little unflattering for real-life art dealers like me, probably reflects how a lot of artists see their dealers as well, and just mentioning that artists have to go through a complex process of selling, etc(most think that once they make something, they can just run over to any museum and hang it) shows that whoever wrote this script knew what they were writing about. In fact, given Ulmer’s background as a surrealist and set designer for expressionist films, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was speaking from the heart here. Carradine was a sculptor and painter too, so he likely could relate to his role here. It also, and here's what I promised to adress in my Black Cat review, explores a recurring theme of Ulmer's about being driven to murder, but I'll elaborate on that in my Detour review. In any case, it’s a far more honest and plausible portrait of what an artist turned to murder would be like than other entries in the “Mad Artist” subgenre, like the Wax Museum films, House of Horrors, Bucket of Blood, some versions of Phantom of the Opera and Theatre of Blood(and one can’t help wondering if Fritz Lang was inspired by this film to make another film the following year also featuring a struggling artist, blackmail, strong horror elements, unrequited love, the river, prostitutes and murder. You know this as 1945’s Scarlet Street.). One can also argue that Morell, who goes insane when his unrealistic demands for perfection are crushed, is a prototype for the titular villain of the Stepfather franchise, as well as various other perfectionist villains in horror films.
 









The legacy of Gaston Morell.

Nils Asther is competent as Lefevre, Jean Parker is likeable and sympathetic as Lucille, unwavering in her loyalty to her sister, Ludwig Stossel is absolutely perfect as the slimy Lamarte, providing a far more despicable villain than Gaston, it’s a role only Peter Lorre could possibly have improved on. Such a shame Stossel did so little work before and after this film. But the real standout is, of course, Carradine. Alternately charming, mysterious, sympathetic, dangerously unhinged, too crafty for his own good, and with every little movement bursting with raw emotion, it’s easy to see why Carradine considered this his greatest performance. And for the man’s many critics, a nice plus is that outside of the puppet show scenes and some scenes where Carradine widens his eyes almost comically, this performance is completely lacking in the hammy overracting typical of the actor. It’s a very human and intelligent portrayal of a man whose biggest sin is being too sensitive. The fact that he gets you rooting for him despite what he does is a surefire mark of a good actor. It ranks up there with such very special performances(where the character isn’t written expressly for pity) such as Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert in M, Lon Chaney Sr. in…just about everything, Ingrid Pitt as Elizabeth Bathory in Countess Dracula, Malcolm McDowell as Alex in A Clockwork Orange, James Cagney as Cody Jarret in White Heat and Richard Wordsworth as the Beggar in the prologue of Curse of the Werewolf. The fact that all of those performances except one are in the horror/sci-fi genre says something.

While the bombastic(and poorly chosen) classical music does detract from the film, it still doesn’t work so far as to sink it. The cinematography is nice, with some cool visual motifs(we begin and end with shots of the river). And once more, I have to praise how the film just magically becomes good halfway through. There are lots of films that start out bad where I just wish they would get better because the concept deserves better treatment, Bluebeard must be praised for being one of the few I’ve seen to do so. It’s nothing short of miraculous, and a clue that Ulmer did care. So I have to give props to him for this one.

Many call The Black Cat a flawed masterpiece, but that term would be better applied to Bluebeard. The Black Cat is just flawed and sporadically so-bad-it’s-good enough to be enjoyable. Bluebeard really is a film which could have been a masterpiece without it’s flaws. So how does this reflect on Ulmer? Was the fact that he needed to save his film midway through(and did) an example of his talent, or an example that the only bad things about his films was he himself? We’ll see next time, when we examine another Mid-Forties Ulmer-fable about an artist looking for love who got caught up in a web of murder through no fault of his own; the 1945 film noir classic Detour.