#bluebeard's castle

[cinematicjourney]

Bluebeard's Castle (1963) | dir. Michael Powell

[clouds-of-wings]

Just a short time after I watched the grotesque comedy with satirical overtones that is Offenbach's "Barbe-bleue" I happened to come across another take on the Bluebeard story. This one could hardly be any more different - a surreal, dark, psychologically astute one-hour, one-act opera from 1911 by Béla Bartók that retains the fairy tale atmosphere of the French folk tale it is based on, but changes the story quite heavily. In short, I consider this "I can fix him: The opera".

You can download it here - beware though, the file is a 3GB DVD rip whose video quality does not justify the large size. VLC player can play it and subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish and Mandarin (I think) are included. If you have the disk space and the patience to switch to a new file every 20 minutes, I'd definitely recommend it, it's visually beautiful and contains what I consider some pretty nuanced acting by the only two singers, the bass Kolos Kováts as Bluebeard and the soprano Sylvia Sass as Judith, his latest lover.

Spoilers and my thoughts under the KR...

Okay so holy shit does she try to fix him! I absolutely loved so many things about this. The castle is clearly an allegory for his psyche - she loves a troubled, mysterious, morally dubious man and wants to "let air and sunshine into his dark castle", she notices right away how wet the walls are and wants to "dry them with her own body" (a visual I particularly like since it makes clear from the beginning that what she is attempting is impossible).

And he absolutely does not even want it. He rebukes her so many times and basically begs her to save herself. He seems conflicted, may be aware of the damage he has done to his past wives, but incapable of not causing pain. But she insists, she pushes past his resistance, when asking nicely does not help she forcefully demands access to the parts of himself that he does not want to reveal to her. She may be inexperienced, reckless (she knows the rumors about him killing his wives!) and unable to see the danger she is in, but the power dynamic between them is not clear at all for much of this work. Judith has a great capacity for love and empathy and she very much wants to help Bluebeard so they can have the beautiful future she envisions, but damn she is pushy. She will "help" whether he wants her to or not.

She does NOT take no for an answer. For much of this work you could think that she's the one in charge, she leads him along, and oh, maybe he's just shy..? Maybe he thinks he's too rotten to be saved? Aw, but *damaged girl voice* he has so much potential...

Something else I notice is that she is pretty much unfazed by the torture chamber and the armory. It doesn't bother her that he has them, it doesn't bother her when she finds the blood stains in them. I guess she thinks it's natural for a nobleman to have these rooms and it's natural for them to have blood stains - that's what they're for. What DOES spook her is when she gets to the beautiful parts of his castle and they ALSO have blood stains.

However, even then, she loves him too much and is too curious to save herself as he keeps begging her to do. Though of course one could also suspect that he is using reverse psychology and knows that refusing will make her even more eager. His inscrutability is part of his appeal both to her and, maybe, to the audience - certainly to me. They did well to cast such a majestic and elegant bass as Bluebeard. I could totally understand Judith's fascination.

A gloomy, humid, dark castle with untold riches inside, a beautiful garden in eternal bloom, wide lands and a frozen lake, if only Judith can force the doors open and get to them, and if she can ignore the blood stains and frozen tears everywhere. If that is not the ultimate "I can fix him" analogy, then I don't know a better one. (I have absolutely been to Bluebeard's castle myself, as you can perhaps tell from how much I vibe with this work.)

And then there's the end. What I've written so far is stuff I'm pretty confident about, I think it's probably what we're supposed to take away from this, more or less. My interpretation of the end is one that not everyone may agree with (maybe not my future self either) and I'm not sure it's what the librettist or the composer had in mind. It's very surreal and kind of strange. If Judith reacted differently to it, one could almost see it as a happy end. But in fact she is terrified, so it's not that.

Judith opens the seventh door (I was reminded of the seven seals of Revelation, actually) and finds out that all those miracles she has seen in the castle are the work of women who have been in the exact same situation as her, the blood and tears she has seen are theirs, and that she is now to become one of them - not dead, as the rumors go, but a mere symbolic representation of Bluebeard's associations with her, an abstract image of beauty and perfection and usefulness, forever locked in his dungeon with the other women who loved him. Her life will be spent as his eternally youthful servant, stripped of everything he doesn't have use for.

It's poetic and romantic, but also very sad. The last shot is of Bluebeard, once again alone in his dingy castle which Judith's presence has not been able to brighten for long. So he filed her away and assigned her a place in his life. Certainly she will be able to increase his riches. But his life is exactly the same, nothing has changed. Only now she is not a person anymore. He is irresistible, intriguing, addictive, but none of those women were able to make his castle less gloomy. Sleet starts falling and he disappears into the darkness.

Edit: A few hours later I'm already not sure about my interpretation of the end anymore. Maybe it's much simpler. Maybe the reason why the wives are eternally youthful and symbolic representations of what Bluebeard associates them with is that they're memories. Maybe he simply has killed them and since the castle is symbolic of his mind, they live in a chamber there as memories.

I really liked this opera! The music is yelling at us the entire time what a bad idea it is for Judith to continue insisting, anyone who knows what the name "Bluebeard" signifies knows she is in danger, and yet she is the one who pushes forward without any coercion from him. And in the end she finds her doom, but it's kind of a beautiful doom, one that looks like honour, even worship at first glance. There are so many details in this work - not only the music and the libretto, but the visuals, the actors' expressions, the entire "gesamtkunstwerk" - that I find extremely cogent and fitting for the story it is telling.

[lafemmequiment]

Bluebeard's Castle (Michael Powell, 1963)

[makeshiftdraco]

"Wait," she said. "There is still one room left." Halbrand stood above her on the stairs, and she watched the muscles of his back tense. Galadriel turned and gestured to a door at the end of corridor. The wood was a sanguine shade of red, and a heavy lock of blackest iron hung from the handle. "What lies beyond this door, my love?" Ominous silence followed this inquiry. "What door?" The question was dripping with deceit, and Galadriel realized Halbrand had not wanted her to notice the strange door cloaked in shadows. "Halbrand…" she chided him, annoyed by his evasion. Her husband slowly turned, dark eyes reluctantly sliding over to the door. His sweet facade had vanished, and his voice was devoid of warmth. "You are never to go into that room, Galadriel."

What Lies Beyond the Door

Haladriel Retelling of Bluebeard's Castle by makeshiftdraco

Written for @tolkienfolkloreweek Day 3: Fairytales

Chapter One: Threshold Crossed

Fandom: The Rings of Power and Tolkien's Legendarium (LOTR, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, etc)

Pairing: Galadriel/Halbrand|Sauron

Rating: Explicit

Status: In Progress

Description:

Halbrand is eager to welcome his bride into their new home, but Galadriel's marital bliss is quickly undermined by strange premonitions and elusive memories. Halbrand assures his queen that the many chambers in his castle are open to her...all except for one. As their honeymoon unravels, Galadriel is plagued by troubling questions. What secrets does her husband keep hidden behind that strange red door deep within the castle? And what is she willing to risk to uncover the truth?

(TLDR: Haladriel Retelling of Bluebeard's Castle)

(Check tags on AO3 for trigger warnings.)

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[annabillers]

photography from the inside of Anna Biller's Bluebeard's castle

[emeraldskulblaka]

Hello theatre mutuals. If you're in LA in November, go and see Bluebeard's Castle for me :)

[fairytalemovies]

[derring-do]

John Relyea and Crispin Lord in Duke Bluebeard's Castle at ENO

"Allison Cook, cast as Judith, withdrew from the performance late in the day because of illness. With only two hours’ rehearsal, Jennifer Johnston sang, not from the side of the stage, as one might expect, but as a costumed, albeit largely immobile presence within Joe Hill-Gibbins’s production. The role was acted, meanwhile, wonderfully well, by Crispin Lord, one of ENO’s staff directors, handsome yet androgynous in a white singlet and silk skirt, so that Bluebeard’s final partner, in a remarkable twist, effectively becomes his husband rather than his wife."

Read more