Bluebeard's Eighth Wife was the first of two collaborations between director Ernst Lubitsch and then up-and-coming screenwriter Billy Wilder. The film, all style and surface, is more Lubistch than Wilder, but the script co-written by Wilder and Charles Brackett (a tandem that would create, among others, The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard) lends itself perfectly to the famous 'Lubistch touch' — the German filmmaker’s characteristic shrewd and methodical humor.

For Lubitsch, making laugh is like making love, and he isn’t the slightest bit interested in instant gratification; in fact, his ap... read the rest.