Duke Bluebeard's Castle may be static in story at times, but because of the atmosphere created and the music it is regardless one of Bartok's best works. While this film adaptation is not one of Michael Powell's best films, coming from a director with a filmography full of great ones, it is nonetheless highly effective and doesn't deserve the relative obscurity it has.
Bluebeard's Castle is not one of the best-looking of Powell's films, but that is not meaning that it looks cheap because it doesn't. This is meaning that Powell's films were always well-made, the best of them among the most beautiful-looking films ever. In fact it's very atmospherically shot with truly creepy Expressionistic settings and lighting that is both moody and effectively garish(a term I've often used negatively but considering the subject and the filming style it works here). Bartok's music is hypnotic and hair-raising in its most suspenseful parts(ie. the penultimate door), and the orchestra play it with every bit the nail-biting mystery and tonal power it ought to have, nothing sounding underpowered or faded. The score is conducted with plenty of authority and nuance too.
Powell's direction is attentive is atmospheric, never does one doubt that this suited him well. The story here avoids being static and while the pace is deliberate and allows the music to breathe and have space not once does the suspense(and there's tons of it in the latter half, nail-biting even towards the end) dissipate or the film never stops being exciting or genuinely unnerving. There are only two characters here, Judith and Bluebeard, and they are brilliantly played by Ana Raquel Satre and especially Norman Foster. Satre is elegance personified and plays Judith with a lot of spirit as well as touching vulnerability, her voice is limpid and doesn't become shrill under pressure. Foster is suitably restrained and powerful in voice, he is legitimately threatening while also bringing a refreshing degree of melancholy to the role.
All in all, a very, very good film and should be better known, proof that despite its obscurity that Powell did make at least one great film after Peeping Tom. The Robert Lloyd, Sylvia Sass and recent Met productions of the opera are also well worth tracking down and very close together in ranking. 9/10 Bethany Cox
