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Bluebeard's Castle (Assignment A1)


Max Jiménez
Professor Roundtree
FMX 211
24 September 2018
Bluebeard’s Castle
The opera I chose to watch was Bluebeard’s Castle, composed in 1918 by Béla Bartók, written by Béla Balázs and based on the French folktale “La Barbe bleue.” As a result of a live stage performance being incredibly difficult to find, I viewed a German film version of the opera from 1963: Herzog Blaubarts Burg (Duke Bluebeard’s Castle) with English subtitles.
The opera was altered from the original folktale in several ways. The opera version only contains two performing characters, Bluebeard and Judith. In addition to this, the way in which the story progresses and ultimately ends is quite different from the centuries-old folktale this opera adapted. In place of Judith being left to her own devices and ultimately discovering Bluebeard’s room with the corpses of his former wives, Bluebeard stays in his castle and gradually reveals his dark secrets to his new wife, opening the seven doors to unveil his still living wives, much to Judith’s horror where she must take the place of the wives that had come before her.
The opera offers a slightly different take on the character and actions of Judith. Rather than being a hopeless young woman forced to marry and stranded in the castle, she appears to gently and persistently persuade Bluebeard to reveal his secrets and true motive (revealed by opening each of the seven doors throughout the opera), until this would lead to her demise in the end.
The French phrase “mise-en-scène” literally means “staging or putting on an action or scene” (Barsam 1) It is the sum of everything that the audience sees, hears, and experiences while viewing the movie. The way that the set design, lighting, and costuming in an opera, or film in this case is a component of “mise-en-scène.”
For Bluebeard’s Castle, I would say that the director and set designer had a challenge for a setting as brooding and as dark as the Duke’s Castle. This is a result of the difficulty one would have when transforming what is traditionally an opera to a movie format. After viewing Bluebeard’s Castle, I was really able to tell how the lighting and prop placement contributed to the “mise-en-scène”, and was successfully able to convey the dark, overall feeling of the castle with seven doorways. Director Michael Powell and designer Hein Heckroth used this quality of the opera to their advantage by creating an intense, dramatic feel, where lighting and abstract set design slowly revealed Bluebeard's dark, twisted motive in regard to his newest wife. “The vivid colors and abstract décor designed by Heckroth and his team give the film a suitably oppressive feel.” (Melville) This abstract design and use of lighting clearly drew on the expressionistic style that had originated in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. According to Chris Baldick of the University of London, “Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect (Heckroth’s abstract set design) in order to evoke moods or ideas.”
Another component of “mise-en-scène” would be composition. To best explain what composition is, I have included an excerpt from Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film by Richard Barsam: “Composition is the organization, distribution, balance, and general relationship of actors and objects within the space of each shot.” (Barsam 1) Bluebeard’s Castle is an opera that in the original form did not contain any “stage action”, and the director, in my opinion, was able to overcome this “lack of stage action” with his choice of composition, i.e. the use of a variety of camera angles including panning shots, close-ups, and the use of overlay effects throughout the film. It really feels as though the characters are progressing deeper and darker as Bluebeard continues to reveal himself to Judith.
BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE AS A VIDEO GAME
If I were a 21st century director, I would have to revise the original libretto (script/the text of an opera) a bit to fit it to an immersive and elaborate first-person puzzle game, so that it would best suit this opera. I would start off the game by reverting to the beginning of the folktale that the opera is based upon, where Bluebeard announces that he must he leave the castle and gives Judith the keys but forbids her to go into certain rooms. As you would progress through each door, you would have to find clues to unlock the next door, and little by little you would piece together what events had transpired in each room until you reached the last.
The game would be heavily dependent on the user’s choice, as it would affect the core gameplay and various paths the player would be able to take. To reach the seventh and final door the player would have the choice of gently and persistently persuading (with the use of in-game dialogue) Blackbeard to reveal it himself (upon his return) as Judith had in the opera or participate in a battle against Blackbeard to find out what lay behind that door. Although the truth would be revealed in the end, it would not be to the satisfaction of the protagonist.
This dark, unavoidable demise would definitely make this an intriguing game to play. If I were successfully able to combine these gameplay elements with the “suitably oppressive feel” of the opera’s set design and the dissonance in its score, it would certainly showcase why and how this piece is important, not only in the chronology of Opera itself, but in many psychologically unnerving pieces of mystery and horror.

Works Cited
Barsam, Richard. “Mise-En-Scène.” WW Norton and Company, 2007.
Edward, Blake. “MISE-EN-SCENE.” College Film & Media Studies, 22 Feb. 2016, collegefilmandmediastudies.com/mise-en-scene-2/.
Jordan, Rolf. “Bluebeard's Castle: Libretto.” The Archers Manifesto, 1964, www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/64_Bluebeard/Words.html.
Melville, David. “Enter the Mind of a Madman...” 17 Dec. 2003.



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