Bluebeard's Castle on AllMovie

Peerless British filmmaker Michael Powell found his career in tatters after directing the still-controversial crime thriller Peeping Tom (1960). Bluebeard's Castle, Powell's first film in four years, constituted an cinematization of the 1911 opera Bluebeard's Castle, by Bela Bartok, about the nefarious exploits of the 19th century Parisian murderer (here played by Norman Foster) who woos his female victims, then dispatches them. Because the British industry was, for all intents and purposes, still blacklisting Powell in 1964, he had to travel to Germany to make this one. Legal issues kept Bluebeard's Castle out of circulation for decades.