Francois Truffaut's film of Cornell Woolrich's THE BRIDE WORE BLACK (1968)

The Bride Wore Black excels the most, at least in my estimation, at portraying a world where the men Jeanne Moreau's Julie is after for cold blooded revenge (not to say her blood doesnt boil a bit in the heat of The Moment That Man Died) are such who have carved out these little comfortable worlds for themselves, cocooned in a kind of privilege that is kind of mundane and easy like having a good suburban home with a wife and cute (kind of perfectly naive and/or dumb) small child or where a good art career is assured.

I was struck by how much time is spent by Truffaut, as I have to assume also was the case in the Cornell Woolrich novel (unread by me and a shame I haven't really), to show us the worlds and lives of these men, how there is almost something endearing or cute in their little ways (ie the one man, the 2nd one with his apartment, who has to have just the right Mountain climbing poster or whatever on his wall for when Julie is paying her final visit), and so underneath what seems to be Truffaut's humanistic approach to direction and character is actually laced with this acidic satire of class and masculine mobility.

This is not to say that Truffaut doesn't leave Julie completely off the hook for her mind-set, dogged and unrepentant it is  - there has to be something to her idealization of her ex as the Perfect/only one since childhood, when we finally see the 'accidental' killing of her freshly minted husband as the men who were there and at least were accomplices if not the doers (the one who did shoot, well, let's just say he gets what's coming to him in the most satisfying twisty and very cold way possible) and she narrates this, though she certainly believes it to be so at any rate - but what I'm struck by, as I'm sure many others have been over the decades, is the liveliness and attitudes that Moreau puts on when Julie goes through her guises as she all too easily gets these men in the palm of her hands. 

Furthermore, it occurs to me that these sequences with these all too easily impressionable and, for the audience, pleasurably duped men (well, with one exception), are so entertaining because Moreau is putting on these guises, laughs and smiles and for the one man with his small child is really endearing (even as the kid says plainly she doesn't look at all like her teacher who she claims to be to daddy, ho ho), and is eventually with the artist played by Charles Denner incredibly sexualized.  Albeit in that last case, it needs to be noted, Julie's Character/play-acting is at the gaze of a man making his "Diana the Huntress."  Today it would've been Wonder Woman, but I digress. 

 The point is, this is a thriller that is so memorable because it's made by someone who we may not immediately associate with cold-blooded thrillers, but has an Auteurist connection (just Google Hitchcock Truffaut if you don't know what I mean, its OK I'll wait and play a record while you wait, gotta be on theme here), and while I can't say this has the most thrilling set pieces, there's enough genuinely interesting moves and touches, in the editing especially, that makes them viable and alive.

This isn't to say the filmmakers don't create some kinetic beats or things that lead the viewer into a particular mood that's intended, like when Julie comes in like a sort of phantom when Michel Bouquet's Coral is in his box for the classical music performance and she sits and he reacts and she barely does but it's enough for this connection to be made all while the strings and keys are plucked and struck.  

But it's not a self conscious This is ALL Cinema STYLE style going on ala De Palma (frankly I don't think he'd be successful at that sort of just wholly Technique-driven approach, and it makes me understand on one hand Tarantino's harsh words for Truffaut while on the other hand puzzled that he wouldn't be involved with the Anti-Heroine-Driven-via-the-need-to-Performance which he's had in almost all of his films to one degree or another);  at the same time, what Truffaut brings to the material and does so with brio is a Naturalistic approach to directing his actors in these mostly commonplace settings of a hotel or house or apartment or art studio, all very good and understanding the irony of these situations, and there is solid, basic attention paid to set up (the injection of who knows what poisonative into a bottle) and payoff (one drinks, the other doesnt). 

Is it Homage?  Sure!  Is Moreau alluring and amusing and devastating in equal measure to watch? When was she ever not, but here especially!  More than anything, I think I'm glad I grew up a bit in my life before coming to a film like this, which doesn't skimp on the pleasures of Genre and executing a scene with a character knowing one thing and the other clearly in the dark until X marks the spot, but is mostly deep down concerned with what a society does with these men, how they can thrive and be successful to one degree or another in domestic and business things when they don't a) feel any need or desire to give up the ghost on what they did and b) how no one is the wiser for it.  

And there's the religious subtext, or just text, as well with Julie too: she visits a priest at some point, in confession of her Revenge.  Why she'd be telling this man this isn't as interesting as why no one else would tell of their crimes (even accidental). Name of the game for the type of Revenge saga this is.  All the same, because of Truffaut's fairly stripped down approach to direction and character, the themes resonate all the more than if it was by some competent but careless Carpet-bagger.  Also, dope ass Herrmann score.