THE BRIDE WORE BLACK Movie Review

La Mariee Etait en Noir

François Truffaut's obsession with the films of Alfred Hitchcock influenced his films in two separate and distinct ways. Many of Truffaut's most personal and inspired works—The Soft Skin, The Wild Child, The Story of Adele H., The Woman Next Door—possess the frighteningly intense, clear-eyed obsessiveness of Hitchcock at his peak. Others, like Mississippi Mermaid, Fahrenheit 451, and The Bride Wore Black, are more Hitchcockian in superficial ways—homages to the master, if you will; variously charming and touching as tokens of Truffaut's esteem, but in a manner more concerned with style than substance. Truffaut's 1968 The Bride Wore Black, based on a book by Rear Window author Cornell Woolrich (as was Mississippi Mermaid), is the story of a woman whose husband is killed on their wedding day, and whose life is transformed into an obsessive crusade to track down and dispatch those responsible. The Bride Wore Black is so filled with direct references to Hitchcock pictures—including a pulsating score by Bernard Herrmann—that it sometimes feels like High Anxiety. But Truffaut's genuine adoration of Hitchcock makes this tribute a heartfelt one, and Jeanne Moreau, who's quite wonderful here, smooths over any of our niggling misgivings with her usual, glorious panache.

NEXT STOP … Rear Window, Jules and Jim, The Man Who Loved Women

1968 107m/C FR Jeanne Moreau, Claude Rich, Jean-Claude Brialy, Michel Bouquet, Michael Lonsdale, Charles Denner, Daniel Boulanger; D: Francois Truffaut; W: Francois Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard; C: Raoul Coutard; M: Bernard Herrmann. VHS, LV MGM, MLB, FCT