BLUEBEARD (1944)

This exceptional Poverty Row production from Z-budget auteur Edgar G. Ulmer offers a rare opportunity to compare & contrast similar projects made the same year at two low-end price points.  Over at 20th/Fox, John Brahm’s THE LODGER, coming in about a step-and-a-half up from a programmer, a Jack the Ripper suspenser on a tortured artistic soul stalking London, compelled to murder beauty till he hits the pause button with his next victim in sight and a police detective on his trail also falling for the woman at risk.  BLUEBEARD has nearly the exact same scenario, but set in Paris with blocked painter/talented puppeteer Gaston Morel (aka Bluebeard).  In THE LODGER, Laird Cregar, Merle Oberon & George Sanders get polish & smooth production values from a major studio that bargain-basement counterparts John Carradine, Jean Parker & Nils Asther can only dream about on a six-day shoot for the PRC releasing outfit.  Yet Ulmer, doing his own remarkable art design with his old U.F.A partner Eugen Schüfftan as cinematographer, creates powerful atmosphere & images thru obvious painted backdrops and false perspective.  At times, we might have stepped into THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI/’20.  Jean Parker disappoints as the object of desire (so too Oberon in LODGER), but most of the cast is unusually strong for this cost-level; Carradine particularly happy with his work, rightly so.  Bumpy going here & there, lots of coverage problems covered with awkward edits, and current prints range from unwatchable to just okay.  (Best I could find came with burned-in Spanish subtitles.)  Yet the film is strangely disturbing, with a stylistic unity of vision that posits a painter’s unique artistic style to unlock a murder mystery.  All in all, one of Ulmer’s more successful oddities.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, THE LODGER/’44. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-lodger-1944.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Ulmer, unusually cognizant on film scores (see DETOUR/’45; CARNEGIE HALL/’47; THE NAKED DAWN/’55;), no doubt smiled at PRC music director Leo Erdody purloining Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ whenever a painting showed up, but may have cringed at Erody’s musical overload elsewhere.  The guy won’t shut up!