La mariée était en noir

Plot synopsis:
As the film opens, Julie Kohler (Jeanne Moreau) tries to throw herself out of an upstairs window, but is stopped by her mother (Luce Fabiole). Julie is dressed in black and is obviously grief-stricken. In the next scene, she is more composed, telling her mother she is going on a long trip, and counting out five piles of money. She gets onto a train, but right afterwards steps down on the opposite side, hidden from onlookers.
The next time Julie is seen, her hair is different, she is wearing white, and looking for a man called Bliss (Claude Rich). He is a ladies' man who is having a party on the eve of his wedding. When Julie arrives, aloof but attractive, he cannot resist approaching her. When they are alone on the balcony of Bliss's high-rise apartment, she tells him her name and pushes him off the balcony.
Her next victim is Coral (Michel Bouquet), a lonely bachelor. She lures him to a concert and they agree to meet the following night. Before their rendezvous, Julie buys a bottle of arak and injects a syringe of poison into it. When she meets Coral at his apartment, she serves him the drink. When he collapses in agony, she reveals her identity to him. He begs for his life, explaining that it was all an accident. In a flashback, there is a wedding procession on the steps of a church; a single shot rings out and the groom falls to the ground. Julie is the widowed bride.
The next man is Morane (Michel Lonsdale) a would-be politician. She follows his wife and young son home, befriends the boy, and gets the wife to leave by sending a fake telegram that the wife's mother is ill. Julie poses as the boy's teacher Miss Becker, and offers to cook dinner for Morane and his son. Afterwards she plays hide-and-seek with the boy, hiding in an enclosed small closet underneath the stairs, before putting the boy to bed. As she is leaving the house, she pretends that she has lost her ring. Morane helps her search, crawling into the closet where she had hidden earlier. She slams the door and locks him inside. Julie reveals her true identity, and he pleads for his life, saying what happened was an accident.
Another flashback reveals that Julie's husband was killed by a rifle shot fired by Delvaux (Daniel Boulanger), member of an informal hunting club that also included Bliss, Coral, Morane and Fergus. The five men were carelessly horsing around with a loaded rifle in an upper room across the street from the church. After the incident, they went their separate ways, intending never to reveal their involvement in the groom's death. Remorseless, Julie uses duct tape to seal the door of Morane's closet, and he suffocates to death.
Julie waits in Delvaux's junkyard, planning to kill him with a handgun, but he is arrested by the police. Julie moves on to find the fifth member of the hunting group: Fergus (Charles Denner), an artist. Julie models for him as the huntress Diana, eventually shooting him in the back with an arrow. She cuts her face out of his painting to remove the only evidence of her presence. When she discovers that Fergus had painted a mural on his wall depicting her reclining in the nude, she gets some paint to cover the mural's face, but changes her mind and leaves.
Julie attends Fergus' funeral and allows herself to be arrested. She admits that she murdered the four men, but refuses to reveal her motives.
Inside a prison, a meal cart is making its rounds. Julie is a prisoner in the women's wing, and Delvaux is on the men's side. When Julie works in the kitchen, she hides a knife. When the cart makes its rounds with Julie as one of the attendants, it turns a corner out of our sight. After a brief pause, a man's scream is heard.

Tags: revenge

Review:
The Bride Wore Black (1968) is noted as being director François Truffaut's gleeful homage/pastiche of the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, with the usual characteristics of deception and retribution, cool cinematography and a lush score by none other than Bernard Hermann all being co-opted alongside some nicely subtle allusions to the broader aspects of the thriller and mystery genres.
I expected from the plot-outline that the film would be incredibly dour and austere but that really isn't the case; with the mixture of lurid, almost B-movie style subject matter, revenge and farce managing to come together fairly well for the most part, as Truffaut tinkers with the expected codes and conventions of the thriller genre in much the same way that Antonioni did with the much superior masterpiece Blowup (1966).
For example, in one particular scene, in which our central character stalks one of her victims through the junkyard where he works, we get Truffaut setting up a series of shots that continually teases us with the slow-build of the sequence, the cut-away to the gun and the impending moment before the expected gunshot and then - unexpectedly - the police arrive and arrest the man before any retribution can be taken.This idea of setting up something potentially very thrilling and exciting, only to then subvert it by way of knowing farce and arch genre references is used throughout The Bride Wore Black, creating an odd juxtaposition between light comedy and cold-blooded murder that probably won't be to all tastes.
Then we have the ultimate revelation of the event that drove the character to seek revenge and the almost broadly comical rendering of the scene and the complete disregard for any kind of logic and reason.Was the reason that Truffaut denounced the film simply because he felt it was uncomplimentary, almost mocking of Hitchcock's work, or did he simply feel that the games within the narrative and the combination of murder and farce were simply unsuccessful on this particular project?
Regardless, the film succeeds on an entirely perverse level, as we watch Jeanne Moreau step into the role of the iconic "Hitchcock blonde" and plot bloody revenge on those that have wronged her.
Although the broader ramifications of the narrative remain vague and enigmatic even through to the end, the fun of The Bride Wore Black is not in its characters or storytelling capabilities, but in the gleeful subversion of the iconography of the Hollywood thriller by way of the Nouvelle Vague and of course, those constant allusions to Hitchcock and his work..
Francois Truffaut's THE BRIDE WORE BLACK is an excellent gift of a film to fans of Hitchcock and even to the master himself.
Jeanne Moreau plays a miserable middle-aged woman, both suicidal and murderous, looking to avenge the death of her life-long companion and husband.We see the murder of the husband repeatedly throughout the picture, studied from different angles and vantage points.
Truffaut extends Hitchcock by showing us in more graphic detail some of the killings and the relentless mission this woman is on is not stylized the least bit.Check out the poisoning scene and tell me you don't see Ingrid Bergman looking at Claude Raines circling and bellowing in expressionistic ways.
After a failed suicide attempt, The Bride (a couple of charecters in the film refer to her by this moniker) makes a vow to god that she'll find the men that are responsible for his death and avenge him in the only way she know's how.
Bride Wore Black, The (1968) *** (out of 4) Truffaut's homage to Hitchcock deals with a mysterious woman (Jeanne Moreau) who, after a failed suicide, decides to track down and kill the five men responsible for her husband's death on their wedding day.
Truffaut was one of William Irish's greatest fans;he wrote a preface for an edition of the American writer's short stories.Not only he directed this movie but he also adapted "la sirène du mississipi" .There's just one problem.Irish's absolute tragic side totally eludes Truffaut.A critic wrote that this writer's endings did not put an end to horror,but prolongated it.Nothing comes close to Irish's desperate universe here.Jean Delannoy Truffaut despised a lot,did a better job with "obsession" .Jeanne Moreau is not Irishian at all.She's too self-confident,too full of joie de vivre to portray such a character.I've always dreamed of what Alexandra Stewart -who plays a small part as a teacher here- could have done with it.Obviously,Truffaut's directing is a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock,but I'm not sure that the Hitchcockian treatment was adequate here.It worked in "rear window" because this movie was ,in the beginning ,one of Irish's short stories and the master could develop it as he wished,but in the full length of a whole novel,the treatment destroys the emotion and the "lost in advance" feeling which emanate from this tormented soul-Irish spent all his miserable life in an hotel room with his mother;an homosexual,he never found true love-.The cast is appealing but most of the actors are wasted ,be they Michel Bouquet or Jean -Claude Brialy.Of course ,it is watchable,there's some suspense,but if you're searching for Irish's world,you must move on..
Once l'd read somewhere that Truffaut gave and interview where he explained how remarkable were Hitch's works, curiously in that time the master of the suspence for many reasons wasn't had a propper respect from american critics, after that point everyone stayed astonished over such Truffaut's valuable comments,loud and clear, therefore all critics change of mindset about Hitch, in this picture was well designed around such bright fingerprints of the master, even an older Jeanne Moreau she was in great shape to the role of a revengeful woman, the plot is plenty acceptable in many ways, l would like to say that Truffaut wasn't my favorite director neither, however it's hard don't recognize a fine picture like that over such suspicious of the great Alfred Hitchcock!!Resume:First watch: 2018 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.
Whatever one says "La Mariée était en noir" is a big bore which would even fail to impress Alfred Hitchcock,a man for whom it was made.The biggest trouble lies in the depiction of the title role played by Jeanne Moreau.She acts in a very bad manner as she displays a whole lot of wooden performances.There is hardly any suspense at all in this film.It is absolutely clear from the outset that as a disgruntled bride would be heading on a killing spree there should have been somebody who would be willing to fight with her.It is a pity that Truffaut did not work hard on removing such a minor glitch while he was directing this film..
This story is about a young woman (Jeanne Moreau) who was widowed on her wedding day when her husband was killed accidentally by five guys messing around with a rifle; she then seeks to kill them one by one, in revenge.
Moreau is captivating, the dialogue is fun and in keeping with 1968 France, and Truffaut is a master at capturing great shots - but I have to say, he didn't match Hitchcock in creating tension or emotional drama, so this film ends up being a bit 'too cool', and thus falls short.
I'm a big fan of French cult cinema, I'm a huge admirer of director François Truffaut and I'm truly keen of actress Jeanne Moreau  And yet, the absolute number one reason why I desperately wanted to see "The Bride Wore Black" is because it formed one of the main influences for Quentin Tarantino's ultimate masterpiece "Kill Bill".
Jeanne Moreau is the bride in "The Bride Wore Black," a 1968 film directed by Francois Truffaut.
This score reminds me of "Vertigo" - in fact, the film reminds me of "Vertigo" more than other Hitchcock films: the opening scene at the window is reminiscent of Stewart and his partner chasing the man in the beginning of "Vertigo"; the flashbacks as Moreau remembers what happened that fateful day, as when Kim Novak goes back to her room and writes to Stewart; the portrait that looks like Moreau in the artist's studio - shades of the Carlotta portrait.As others have pointed out, "The Bride Wore Black" asks us to make some leaps in logic, otherwise known as plot holes.
I'm not saying that "La Mariée était en Noir" ("The Bride Wore Black") isn't a good film or that it's not directed by a talented man like François Truffaut but what we see in this film is something that doesn't sound or look like none of his works and don't even get close to the thrills the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock gave us in his classics, and this is Truffaut's tribute to the man.Jeanne Moreau is Julie, the bride of the title who's on a quest for revenge against five men behind the murder of her future husband during her wedding ceremony.
There's plenty of differences in both stories, obviously, but both are very good films.As mentioned, Truffaut pays a tribute to Hitchcock, not only in this being a film of suspense but also working with composer Bernard Herrmann in the musical score, and some elements, sequences and plans created by the master.
Herrmann's music is overused and doesn't add nothing to the story; the screenplay is interesting but flawed, never explaining to us how on earth Julie managed to track down these guys, and despite some great revelations as the plot unfolds (when the woman discovers what really happened with her husband) those surprises aren't enough to make us feel intrigued by the story since the heroine is too perfect, nothing goes wrong with her, her plans always seems to work (lack of surprises on this field) and the guys she's after are too soft, there's no evil on them but the way things moves there's no way they could be evil.
The great thing about "The Bride Wore Black" is the fact of being a good film as usual in Truffaut's filmography, never disappoints (just a little).
Francois Truffaut greatly respected and admired the work of Alfred Hitchcock and "The Bride Wore Black" is his homage to the great director.
Its off-beat nature, its numerous Hitchcockian elements and the mystery surrounding the stony-faced widow who embarks on a murder spree are just some of the strong features of this tense revenge thriller which interestingly, also incorporates some of the more gentle and light qualities that are typical of Truffaut's work.Julie Kohler (Jeanne Moreau) is the mysterious woman who, after having failed in an attempt to commit suicide, sets off on a journey to kill the five men whose names she has written down on a list.
It transpires that Julie's husband had been shot dead on the church steps on the day of their wedding and she held the five men accountable because, after a night of drinking and playing cards together, one of them had fired a high-powered rifle out of a window opposite the church and this thoughtless act had robbed her of her new husband who'd been her childhood sweetheart and the love of her life.Julie's modus operandi is to lure each victim into a situation where she can kill him.
Her plan for her fourth victim is thwarted because Delvaux (Daniel Boulanger), who's a used car dealer, is arrested by the police for handling stolen property but with the aid of a bow and arrow, she successfully completes the murder of the fifth man on her list, an artist called Fergus (Charles Denner).The actions that Julie takes following the murder of Fergus initially seem to be illogical but her reasons soon become clear because the way in which she manipulates events to ensure that she's able to conclude her mission is ingenious and provides the movie with a tremendous conclusion which is also brilliant in the way that it's filmed.The presence of disguises, a poisoned drink and high-angle camera shots together with a Bernard Herrman score, the theme of obsession and a sequence that takes place in a concert hall, are just some of the many Hitchcock trademarks that feature in this story.
The film's main character, Julie Kohler, is seeking revenge on 5 men, one of whom accidentally (and ridiculously) shot and killed her husband on their wedding day.
Truffaut said The Bride Wore Black was his homage to Hitchcock.
After watching auteur film maker François Truffaut's Film Noir Shoot the Pianist I decided to take a look at his IMDb page,where I spotted a revenge psychological Film Noir Thriller which appears to have "inspired" a number of recent movies.With Truffaut being a pretty big name,I was surprised that the only DVD (with English Subtitles) out was a French import edition,which led to me getting ready to lift the veil of the bride.The plot:Attempting suicide by diving out of a window, Julie Kohler is stopped by her mum.Gathering her composure,Kohler gathers a notebook with five names and 5 piles of cash.Packing everything up,Kohler tells her mum that she is going on a long holiday.Visiting a luxury apartment block,Kohler gets the person at the front desk to reveal when and where a man called Bliss is having his stag party.Greeting all the guests at his stag party,Bliss finds his eyes being drawn to a mysterious women.Unable to take his mind off the women, (who none of the guests recognise) Bliss decides to go up and talk to her.Introduceing herself,Kohler gets Bliss to join her on the balcony,so that they can speak privately.Whilst Bliss says that he has never seen her before,Kohler puts her scarf round a tree in front of the balcony,and tells Bliss to climb over and get it.As Bliss climbs over the balcony,Kohler reveals that they actually met 5 years ago at her wedding,and pushes Bliss to his death.
Leaving Bliss's dying stag party behind,Kohler sets her sights on giving four other men a late wedding present from a dressed in black bride.View on the film:Married to a "troubled" legacy, (from Truffaut & cinematographer Raoul Coutard having vicious arguments over the style of the movie for the whole production,which led to lead Jeanne Moreau having to direct the rest of the cast,to Trauffaut to later calling the title "A disappointment"!) Truffaut is still able to serve up a smoking hot dish of revenge.Whilst not featuring as much social commentary as his "French New Wave" work, Truffaut & Jean-Louis Richard's adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's novel does slyly make each of the 5 guys on Kohler's death wish list be rooted in cosy upper/middle- class lifestyles,with the "tidy" image that they all offer allowing each of them to cover their deadly pasts.Taking an episodic approach to Kohler's revenge,the writers brilliantly take their time in allowing Kohler's attacks to become increasingly harsh,with Kohler's initial playfulness being burnt away to reveal a merciless femme fatale.Spending time with each of the 5, Truffaut and Richard give each segment its own unique Neo- Noir edge,from Delvaux's grubby car dealing,to Morane's upstanding family life bubbling away into darkness.Keeping away from unwrapping all of Kohler's mysterious past,the writers delicately open up brief glimpses into Kohler's past,which give the title a tense mood,as the flashbacks become threaded in Kohler's search for revenge.Despite his comments later about the movie,director François Truffaut and cinematographer Raoul Coutard give the title a ravishingly ultra- stylised Film Noir blushing bride.Backed by a superb score by Bernard Herrmann which transforms wedding bells into a doom-laden anthem, Truffaut nods to "The master of suspense" with charismatic enthusiasm, as Truffaut follows Kohler's revenge attacks with dazzling tracking shots which follow Kohler setting her plans,to tense,tightly held shots sinking one of the guys into the permanent darkness that he helped to push Kohler into.Giving the revenge Film Noir a touch of dour Gothic with Kohler's alluring black and white dresses, Truffaut spreads rich frosty reds across the title,which wonderfully peel open Kohler's (mostly) cold emotions for her victims.Given the challenge of directing the rest of the cast during production,the beautiful Jeanne Moreau gives an excellent performance as Kohler.Showing pure joy in the flashback,Moreau makes sure that the ghost of the joy always stays at the front of the title,as Kohler glides into Film Noir hell.Spending lots of time with each victim before they meet their end,Moreau strikes a perfect balance in pulling Kohler's tormented nerves across the screen,whist keeping a sense of mysterious,icy femme fatale deeply linked to Kohler,as the bride walks out in black..
This film is an excellent example of a revenge thriller which follows Julie Kohler, the bride of the title, as she exacts revenge on those responsible for her husband's death on their wedding day.
Being a longtime admirer of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, from the early movies of his British period, to his work for Hollywood in the 40, 50s, 60s, and early 70s, what a disappointment it was for me to finally catch up with Mr Truffaut's supposed homage to Hitch's immense talent.The Bride Wore Black honestly struck me as being seriously lacking in suspense or dramatic tension, as well as simply failing to possess any genuine credibility.As another reviewer pointed out, Ms Moreau's "Plain Jane" appearance in portraying the film's vengeful protagonist, as well as what I'd describe as being her consistently glum persona, as that character, really makes it hard for the audience to believe (at least this audience member, anyway) that men could fall under her spell in the way that the writer and director of the film, present a couple of male characters as being enticed by such an unappetizing, would be seductress.
Truffaut pays homage to Hitchcock in this suspense thriller starring the incredible Jeanne Moreau.
Truffaut's Hitchcock homage, which in turn led to Kill Bill, pays tribute more in style than in theme, as Moreau's widowed bride tracks down the five men responsible for her husband's death (I say "responsible", four of them get a pretty bum rap), amidst numerous clever directorial touches (like the camera snaking around the bushes in front a potential victim's house) and to the strains of Bernard Herrmann's superb score.