Word: truffauts
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...BRIDE WORE BLACK. Juggling erotica and neurotica, Jeanne Moreau plays a wronged bride out to revenge her murdered husband. Director Francois Truffaut's homage to Hitchcock has all the ingredients for a tense film in the genre of suspense...
...camera begins to follow a young mother and her son walking home from school; although we do not see Julie Kohler (Jeanne Moreau) following them, the boy's glances directly into the camera lens make us realize Julie's presence as that of the camera. To a limited extent Truffaut can make use of point-of-view and the consequent audience identification with Julie to prevent us from watching her with detachment, judging her without contemplation. She is after all, systematically murdering the five men responsible for the accidental death of her husband just following the wedding ceremony. The relative...
...Thornhill's adventure with the spies almost kills him, finally leaves him a more complete man than in the beginning of the film; Jeffries in Rear Window is more mature for his journey into depravity, as is Marnie after experiencing for a second time the trauma of her youth. Truffaut is too intelligent to afford dramatic consummation only to Julie's desire for revenge, and some indirect therapy does take place in The Bride Wore Black, Truffaut suggesting that at least three of Julie's victims die more realized human beings, better for having known her. On one extreme...
...Bride Wore Black is perhaps less an homage to Hitchcock than Truffaut's own attempts at working Hitchcock-style, planning every shot and cut in advance of the shooting. Coutard's claustrophobic framing suggests "plan-sequence," sketches of shots realized by the camera, and there are no traces of the nouvelle vague hand-held technique of Truffaut's films through Soft Skin. A shot will follow a telephone wire in close-up through two rooms, stopping briefly at a closeup of the phone, then dollying into a medium close shot of the victim, unaware his phone wire has been severed...
...often a laborious process, and The Bride Wore Black reflects much of that in its shaky moving shots and occasional harsh cuts. But anything made with any kind of style is good to see these days, given what Hollywood is releasing, and the pleasure of having a new Truffaut around is diminished only by the Boston release this week of Bunuel's Belie de Jour, and Chabrol's incredible The Champagne Murders, about which we will have more to say later...