La sirène du Mississipi

Plot synopsis:
Louis Mahé (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a wealthy tobacco plantation owner on Réunion island in the Indian Ocean, is awaiting the arrival of his bride to be, Julie Roussel (Catherine Deneuve), whom he has never met. They became acquainted through the personals column of a French newspaper and have been corresponding by mail. At the Hotel Mascarin he meets his partner Jardine who accompanies him to pick up the ring. Louis drives to the dock to greet Julie who is arriving on the steamer Mississipi (spelled with one p according to the French spelling of the river at the time) from Nouméa, the capital of New Caledonia. When they meet he is surprised by her beauty and does not recognize her; she is not the woman in the photo that she had sent him. She explains that she sent the photo of a neighbor to assure the sincerity of his intentions. He confesses that he too has not told the complete truth, having hidden the fact that he was wealthy.
Louis and Julie quickly marry, and his adoration of his new bride makes him overlook inconsistencies with what she wrote in her letters. He gives Julie access to his bank accounts and prints her image on the cigarette packs his company manufactures. After receiving an angry letter from Julie's sister, Berthe Roussel (Nelly Borgeaud), demanding to know the whereabouts of Julie, Louis returns home to find that Julie is gone, and that she has absconded with nearly 28 million francs, all but emptying his bank accounts. Soon after, Julie's sister Berthe arrives and informs him that the woman he married was not Julie and that she saw her sister board the Mississipi. They hire a private detective, Comolli, to track down the impostor and bring her to justice.
On a flight to Nice, France, Louis suddenly collapses from exhaustion. While recuperating in the Clinique Heurtebise sanitarium, he sees Julie('s impostor) on television, dancing at a nightclub in Antibes. He buys a gun and travels to Antibes where he breaks into her room at the Hotel Monorail, intent on killing her. When she returns and is confronted by Louis, she offers no resistance. Explaining that her real name is Marion Vergano, she tells him of her sordid past; of the years she spent in prison; and of her association with a heartless gangster, Richard, who was with her on the Mississipi. She recounts that when they met Julie Roussel and learned of her forthcoming marriage, Richard fabricated a plot to kill Julie and send Marion in her place to rob Louis. Afterwards Richard forced her to go through with the robbery and then abandoned her. She tells Louis that she still loves him, and Louis forgives her.
Louis and Marion buy a red convertible and drive to Aix-en-Provence where they move into a house together and spend their days traveling the region and making love. Their happiness is interrupted, however, by Comolli, who has arrived in Aix on the trail of the impostor. After trying in vain to bribe the detective to drop the case, Louis shoots him dead and buries him in the wine cellar of the house. Louis and Marion flee to Lyon, but she grows increasingly dissatisfied with their fugitive existence and longs for a life of luxury in Paris. Louis returns briefly to Réunion and sells his share in the plantation to his partner Jardine. Upon his return he finds the police are on their trail. Again they are forced to flee, leaving most of his money behind.
They head into the mountains where they find an isolated cabin in which to hide. They hope to cross over into Switzerland, but Marion is restless and unhappy with their life on the run. Louis becomes increasingly ill, and after nearly collapsing, he suspects that Marion has been putting rat poison in his coffee. He attempts to escape, but Marion brings him back to the cabin. As she pours him another glass of coffee, he reveals his knowledge of her plan, accepts his fate with no regrets, and expresses his overwhelming love for her. Ashamed at her actions, Marion knocks the glass from Louis' hand and vows to make amends. She acknowledges that no woman deserves to be loved like this, but she assures him that she loves him and that they can still go away together. Crying in his arms, Marion tells him, "I'm learning what love is, Louis. It's painful." After Louis regains his strength, they leave the cabin behind them in a snow storm and head off together toward the border.

Tags: murder

Review:
This is one of the best films I've seen in the last years.Belmonndo and Deneuve shine in their respective roles, he as a naive plantation owner and she as an enigmatic trickster.Words won't do this masterpiece justice,suffice it to say that this is a movie that explores the darker side of love and the pain,humiliation and capacity for self-delusion that go with it, although it's dressed as a film noir.
I've slowly been collecting the films available on DVD of both Catherine Deneuve and Francois Truffaut.
Both actress and director have done some stinkers in their time - fortunately Mississipi Mermaid is not one of them.Next to "The Soft Skin", coincidentally staring Deneuve's sister (the late Francoise Dorleac), this would have to be my favourite Truffaut film.As well as directing, Truffaut also wrote the screenplay.
Something that always strikes me about Truffaut is his almost childlike innocence when presenting a story -- one could almost call it naivety.There's a scene towards the end of the film where Belmondo returns to the apartment in Lyon with the remains of the loot.
It's a scene that could almost come from the mind of a child - but that's Truffaut for you.Watching Catherine Deneuve in her films of the late 60's is indeed a sensory pleasure.
It certainly gives films of this period a unique look.Highly recommended for both Deneuve and Truffaut fans.......
The only vantage that the remake has over Truffaut's film is the awesome sex scenes which makes voyeuristic viewers go crazy over the bold moments of a poor film.The French version has Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo in a more romantic story that breaks into a good thriller.
It has some weak moments but still a good film that is directed by one of the most incredible and hard working directors of all time.
The performers are elegant, and the way both actors portray their roles, in a mysterious and complex style makes of "Mississippi Mermaid" a very intriguing film where the next moment is the most interesting, the most awaited, it's full of surprises (by the way the ending is different than the one unbelievably made in the remake).Watch it without creating too much expectations and you'll enjoy it.
In Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, the owner of a cigarette factory Louis Mahé (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is engaged through correspondence with Julie Roussel and he does not know her.
He recovers and finds that the woman, actually Marion Vergano (Catherine Deneuve), works in the Phoenix Club Privé in Antibes and lives in the low-budget Monorail Hotel.
But Comolli is chasing Marion in France accused of murdering Julie."La Sirène du Mississipi" is a film-noir by the great director/writer François Truffaut, with an unconventional love story of passion, murder and love that hurts.
Catherine Deneuve makes this film worth and gives credibility to the passion and lust of Louis.
There, like here, it is hard to know if crime or patient love will win out in the end.I did not care much for the New Wave style editing, which seemed out of sync with the dramatic story at times.
The many shots of Belmondo driving kept reminding me of the beginning of "Breathless." The color seemed a bit dull and washed out.The locations are lovely, but Truffaut seems to have only one thing on his mind, the relationship between the lead characters, Louis and Juli/Marion.
For example, Louis has been telling Juli/Marion how much he loves her and how beautiful she is and then suddenly he gets upset and tells her how there are many of her kind - she is not really a woman or a girl, but a "chick".
Watching the scene, one thinks about how easily and naturally men can degrade women, even women they love.The film is a bit long and occasionally meanders, but it is emotionally intense at many points along the way.
It seems that nothing is happening and then suddenly there's a surprise that makes you think, "Oh my goodness, I didn't expect that." It may not be one of Truffaut's best films, but second-rate Truffaut is still better than 90% of other directors' best stuff..
This agreeable French movie deals about a millionaire owner of a tobacco factory on an African island nearly to Madagascar named Louis(Jean Paul Belmondo).
Good performances by Jean Paul Belmondo as young proprietary of a cigarette company who seems determined to fall under the spell of a femme fatale and a wonderful Catherine Deneuve as suspect heroine.
Loosely based on the novel titled'Waltz into darkness' by Cornell Woolrich (Rear window and screenwriter of Alfred Hitchcock hour) who also was adapted in 'Truffaut's The bride wore black'.Colorful cinematography by Denys Clerval(Stolen kisses) and atmospheric musical score by Antoine Duhamel, Truffaut's usual musician.This is one of the best of his suspense movies along with ¨Farenheit 451 and Shoot the piano player¨.
The film is a joy to watch, not just for the plot, which is gripping, but also for the superb performances of the actors, Deneuve and Belmondo.
I would recommend this film to all Truffaut or Deneuve fans.
It is a brilliant Hitchcockian style thriller with exciting twists and interesting relationships and characters that develop as the film does.
Deneuve steals the show in this film, and it is clear that at the time of making the film Truffaut was very much smitten with her.
On the surface, Francois Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid is a taut, well- made Hitchcockian thriller that features good looking actors (including the alluring, icy blonde), exciting chases and bizarre circumstances.
Jean-Paul Belmondo puts aside his typical suave and cool demeanor to play a wealthy but lonely and somewhat naive tobacco plantation owner who puts in a request for a mail-order bride, only to discover that she looks like Catherine Deneuve.
The best I can muster is that Truffaut wanted to make a movie as tedious, painful, puerile, annoying, illogical, and brainless as the experience of being in love.
I'm not sure what Truffaut intended, because from the start Monsieur Belmondo does not convince that he's a man who's spent his life on Reunion Isalnd, running a cigarette factory.
It focuses on Reunion resident Louis Mahe (Jean-Paul Belmondo) marrying Julie Roussel (Catherine Deneuve), who may or may not be what she seems.Anyway, it's okay just to watch, but I wouldn't make it my first choice.
Among other things, how a woman as beautiful as Deneuve could be a person such as Julie/Marion is simply beyond anyone's ability to suspend disbelief; the role absolutely demands someone not so beautiful.
A title like this makes a film flop, even the French title is not much better.
Too bad - Truffaut & Deneuve must have been enough to sell it..This is a long film, but largely worth it.
We do like films to have a real sense of finality, and that is missing here.It was the case in many of her films that Deneuve became a canvas for Directors to play their fantasies out on, and this time it doesn't work as well.
Mississippi Mermaid : A supreme example of bad film making by French new wave pundit Monsieur Truffaut..
Every major director has experienced inevitably laborious phases of making really bad films.This happens as there are times when all creative people tend to hibernate.French new wave wonder kid Truffaut is also no exception to dreadfully malevolent rule of bad film making.
There have been some phases in his cinematographic career wherein he has made some really atrocious films.One can quote films like "The Bride wore black"/La Mariée était en noir, "The Man who loved women"/L'Homme Qui Aimait Les Femmes and "Mississippi Mermaid"/La Sirène Du Mississipi as some of the bland films which have been directed by Truffaut.
Mississippi Mermaid is a colossal failure as its star studded caste is largely wasted.One of French cinema's most vibrant pairs actors Jean Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve look interesting but hardly offer any proofs of good acting.This film about a mail order bride is a good example of foregone conclusion as there is neither proper suspense nor any kind of well developed mystery.Truffaut has attempted to make a good film about love but ended creating a farce about a woman who gets the better of a stupid man..
MISSISSIPPI MERMAID is a disturbing and unsettling examination of what it means to be in love with the "wrong" person.Truffaut's directing is his usual outstanding work.
You know - I seriously think that this 1969 "WTF!?" French film should be promptly re-titled - "The Bad, the Beautiful, and the Boring." - 'Cause, in my eyes, that's all that this wretched "Francois Truffaut" production amounted to.Filled-to-overflowing with one laughably preposterous situation after another - This, to me, was one of those ludicrous romance stories that literally cried, begged, and demanded to be spoofed, big-time.Starring Catherine Deneuve (one of the most vacantly frigid actresses that French cinema has ever produced) - This film's scenes of sexual intimacy were (thanks to Deneuve) some of the most flaccid and non-arousing ever recorded on celluloid.Put plain and simple - I rank Mississippi Mermaid as being just pure adulterated excrement - Nothing more.
Some have said that this film poignantly explored the heart ache of love between two people who are wrong for each other but I can't help but wonder if Truffaut was trying to be funny..
This was Truffaut's second attempt at a "Hitchcock" movie, and I think "The Bride Wore Black" succeeds better than this one because Truffaut maintains the suspense throughout.
Frankly Bouquet was not so impressive in this film, but less than that was the performance of Catherine Deneuve.
This movie feels a bit like 'Truffaut doing Hitchcock', which has its good points and bad points.
Knowing absolutely nothing about it, I was intrigued by the first part, when a tobacco plantation owner on Reunion Island (Jean-Paul Belmondo) meets his fiancée (Catherine Deneuve) who he met and fell in love with through the mail, soon realizing that not is all as it seems.
However, on the negative side (and without giving away the plot), as the movie went on, the actions of the characters (and Belmondo in particular) were not always believable.
It kept my interest and had some great shots by Truffaut, including a fantastic scene between Belmondo and Deneuve at a fireplace, but ends up 'good' and 'not great' as a result..
"Julie, you are adorable," says Louis Mahe (Jean-Paul Belmondo) to his beautiful new mail- order bride, Julie Rousel (Catherine Deneuve).
Most of the movie places us in France after Louis has found her and accepted her as Marion Vergano Mississippi Mermaid, written and directed by Francois Truffaut, is a movie of Louis' obsession, of sexual psychosis, of parasitic selfishness, of stolen identity and of rat poison, with a lot of self-revealing (some of it even true) dialog thrown in.
Still, murder at the top of the stairs, the star power of Deneuve and Belmondo and some eccentric passing opinions (Louis thinks Johnny Guitar is "a love story, with lots of feeling in it."), all handled with Truffaut's characteristic confidence isn't something to pass by.
I think Truffaut with Mississippi Mermaid started with a nice, nasty, obsessional pulp tale, but then tried to do too much with it..
This movie begins at the languorous tropics,in the tropical,colonial languor,and it ends in snow,winter and cold winds.The music contributes a lot to the film's pace.La Sirène Du Mississipi is dedicated to Renoir,yes,but it constitutes an implicit tribute to Hitchcock,and there are many Hitchcockian elements that can be listed here:the score (notice that Truffaut did not like it:"the score of Mississippi Mermaid isn't very good",in a '70 interview); the photography;a certain sense of the movie as an object,as a thing of art;the irony (a bed scene is juxtaposed to the image of the money greedily caressed by Mrs. Deneuve);the fevered dream-sequence;the suspense;Mrs. Deneuve's beauty;a certain weirdness;the foreboding music.Yes,La Sirène Du Mississipi looks,indeed,very Hitchcockian,but in a meritorious and creative way.I think Truffaut saw in the Hitchcockian thrillers a genre on its own.His film is not a pastiche,but a creation in this genre.The gentleness,the ardor,the smoothness,the gentlemanly comic,the smooth-tempered frankness,the contemplation in such a dynamic show,are all Truffaut's.Mrs. Deneuve looks jaunty,fetching and fervid,and La Sirène has some fetishist notes:Belmondo burns Mrs. Deneuve 's lingerie,as if to punish his missing wife;playing the fool with Mrs. Deneuve,he hides her underwear.This is building Mrs. Deneuve's sexual myth,in a low-brow,fetishist key.Belmondo knows how to look dispassionate, credulous,agile, scatter-brained,delusion-ed, puzzled,scathing,pushing, resigned, feverish:a businessman from the Tropics,a believer in some values,educated,somehow naive and trusting ;he wears his white pullovers.As a character,"Louis Mahé" changes,evolves,multiform and malleable,and becomes more and more interesting as a man.I see Truffaut put heart in La Sirène:as I said,he dedicated it to Renoir,followed in Hitchcock's footsteps,and used an Hitchockian aesthetics,and made "Louis Mahé" read eagerly Balzac ("I love books and films equally, but how I love them!
My feeling is expressed in that scene in The 400 Blows where Antoine lights a candle before the picture of Balzac.",Truffaut in '70) .But Truffaut later disowned,repudiated his fine show.The critics also treated bad "La Sirène ...".(Truffaut said:"The critics didn't like it, nor did the public--perhaps because Deneuve and Belmondo didn't appear in their usual sort of roles.")Maybe,maybe it didn't live up to its author's expectations ,he wanted to make more than an amusing and thrilling show;Truffaut wanted to make,I guess,a Vertigo or a North by Northwest of his own-that is,an ultimate masterpiece,something very poetic,etc..Well,maybe it's not all that.
("Whatever is wrong with that film is my fault and not the fault of my stars.")Though,despite the critics' coolness and even Truffaut's own disappointment,"La Sirène ..." is a movie I admire.It may not be the masterpiece wished for,it may not have lived up to Truffauts ambitions,yet it is a thrilling show and it offers much delight;it certainly has its own beauty,its picturesque,its poetry,its suspense.He wanted a masterpiece;he got a very good movie instead.It is better than "Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me".I must say I am as excited as Truffaut was with Belmondo climbing Mrs. Deneuve's balcony.Truffaut said his "Mermaid" was "a smash" in Japan;it is obvious he did not considered it as a bad movie,but as one that could have been better..
The first 1/3 of this movie I loved and thought it was going to be one of Truffaut's best films.
Reuniting with cinematographer Denys Clerval after Stolen Kisses, Truffaut continues to open up on his Hitchcock inspiration via graceful tracking shots capturing the boiling heat on the Reunion island, back-screen projected car scenes creating a lovers on the run thriller atmosphere, and a return to the Switzerland safe house from Truffaut's first Noir Shoot The Piano Player,snowing in the romance between Mahé and Vergano on a doomed poetic note.Whilst his other Noir's of the era had a firm foundation for their playing around with time, (the extended flashbacks of Piano,the kill list of Bride,and the 4th wall breaking of A Gorgeous Girl Like Me) the time-frame Truffaut springs here feels incredibly disjointed,as the passage of time between Mahé and Vergano (played with an alluring Femme Fatale edge by Catherine Deneuve) romance stutters between feeling like it has taken place over years-from her appearance and Mahé (a restless Noir loner Jean-Paul Belmondo) being in a mental hospital, to a chance encounter with a detective stating that it has only been a matter of weeks.
Leaving behind Mahé almost penniless, Truffaut aims for Hitchcock-style twists that miss due to the revelation that Vergano is not who she claims,(who has sent piles of letters to Mahé)making Mahé's passionate love for a total stranger feel rather random,as Mahé searches for the Mississippi mermaid..
I've been working my way through Francois Truffaut's filmography & after viewing about a dozen of his films I just don't think that he's as great as so many other people say he is.
The rest that I've viewed are really just varying shades of CRAP.After watching Mississippi Mermaid, I just have to give up on Truffaut altogether because I just can't take any more !!!There is just NO WAY that any man could be as utterly STUPID as the protagonist Louis Mahe is portrayed in this film, much less a big businessman who owns a big plantation & a big factory, Sure!
3)After the FANTASTIC coincidence of running into Julie/Marion 7k miles from home in Nice France & confronting her in a hotel room with a pistol, STUPID Louis actually believes Marion's sob story & falls even more in love with her.
I mean this FOOL never even considers that this gal who was involved in killing the real Julie, who fraudulently marries him, & who runs away with 28mil of his dough could be just lying once again.4)Even if he did fall even more deeply in love with Marion in the Nice France hotel room & bought her story, any guy with an IQ above 30 would've just walked out on her & wrote off the whole thing as a bad experience, because the cops are still looking for Marion & any continued contact with her would implicate him as aiding a fugitive.
Overall, the GROSS, FANTASTIC, & TOTALLY UNREAL STUPIDITY of the protagonist Louis Mahe in Mississippi Mermaid makes the whole story line of this film so OUTRAGEOUS that I just can't take this film seriously AT ALL..
This man would have had local girls in droves.Truffaut, like Goddard, started out great, but was making mostly garbage by the late 1960s.
They ended up being captured, propped up and supported by the Hollywood/French film industry that they had first rebelled against and criticized.After viewing most of Truffaut's catalogue, I just don't think he was as good as everyone has been led to believe.
I believe that when it all comes down to it, most of Truffaut's movies are a pain to watch.
Not to mention the ridiculous love angle.I believe that Belmondo and Deneuve did the movie just for the money.