A bride – named Julie Kohler and played by Jeanne Moreau as a focused, unwavering huntress – swears revenge against the five men responsible for the murder of her beloved, shot on the steps of a church during their wedding day. Adapted from a novel by Cornell Woolrich and directed by Francois Truffaut, The Bride Wore Black (1968) is often described with reference to Alfred Hitchcock, particularly Truffaut’s acknowledged influence from the master of suspense. A comparison that’s clear with having Bernard Herrman compose the score, soaring alongside the use of POV tracking shots, or playful montages.
If The Bride Wore Black was made in a later decade, or by a different director (you don’t have to imagine; Kill Bill is basically the same concept), there might have been more interest in the ‘kills’, heightening tension or demonstrating cleverness in their deaths. I’m sure that’s why some people knock Truffaut’s genre efforts, and even he did not view this film fondly retrospectively being quite disappointed by it. I was really taken by it, how it used this revenge plot and incorporated a melodramatic look at relationships and sex.
As we are introduced to each of the five victims, they generally offer a different aspect of French male chauvinism, either married and keen to have an affair, or a compulsive womaniser, each taking Moreau’s mysterious presence as a welcome addition to their lives without question, until her motive is revealed. By then it’s too late. The game of the movie is how Moreau introduces herself into these men’s lives, her ultimate motive (as well as her accompanying kill list in a little notebook) revealed gradually over the narrative, and eventually seduces them with her allure alone. Moreau is fantastic as the indomitable heroine, eventually comparable to myth when she poses as Diana the Hunter for a painter. But Truffaut keeps things from a humanist perspective, and we see her emotional instability at one point, eventually tampered for her cold and calculated vengeance. Great supporting cast including Michel Lonsdale and Charles Denner. Brilliant black-and-white dresses and looks for The Bride as she carries out her crimes.
There’s something very elegant and eerie to the whole enterprise, and even if it doesn’t satisfy as a Hitchcockian thriller like a De Palma might, it has enough panache to please. Available to stream on Amazon Prime. Recommended.
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