Landru [Bluebeard] **** (1963, Charles Denner, Michèle Morgan, Danielle Darrieux, Hildegard Knef, Juliette Mayniel, Stéphane Audran, Catherine Rouvel) – Classic Movie Review 10,324

A well-cast Charles Denner stars as the creepy charmer Henri Désiré Landru, in director Claude Chabrol’s 1963 real-life period serial killer thriller Landru [Bluebeard], set in France during World War One.

Family man Landru, a father of four, contacts Parisian women through newspaper lonely hearts ads, and then proceeds to seduce them at his villa at Gambais, outside Paris, where he kills them and burns their bodies. He then takes his victims’ bank accounts to keep his wife, his mistress and his four children.

It is perfect material for Chabrol, and it inspires him to near his best form. The screenplay is written by Françoise Sagan.

Michèle Morgan, Danielle Darrieux, Hildegard Knef, Juliette Mayniel, Stéphane Audran, Catherine Rouvel are the splendid gallery of women in the case.

The real-life French serial killer Henri Désiré Landru (12 April 1869 – 25 February 1922), nicknamed the Bluebeard of Gambais, murdered at least seven women in the village of Gambais between December 1915 and January 1919. He killed at least three other women, and a young man, at a house he rented from December 1914 to August 1915 in the town of Vernouillet.

The story is also told in Bluebeard (1944), The Madonna’s Secret (1946), Bluebeard [Blaubart] (1951), and Bluebeard (1972).

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,324

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