The Bride Wore Black (La mariée était en noir)

 

 

Hitchcock and Truffaut

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Truffaut on the set with Jeanne Moreau

THE BRIDE WORE BLACK (La mariée était en noir)        B+                                               France  Italy  (107 mi)  1968  d:  François Truffaut

After that, I wanted to make another movie with Jeanne Moreau, but I didn’t want a love story, so I thought of a book I had read when I was 14, called ‘The Bride Wore Black,’ about a woman who kills the five men responsible for the accidental shooting of her husband on their wedding day, and I wanted to film it like a fairy tale.  It was a story about fatality, about men who had done something in their youth, and this bride had the mission of vengeance to carry out.  I told Jeanne Moreau not to be tragic, to play it like a skilled worker with a job to do, conscientious and obstinate.                                                                                           —François Truffaut interview by Sanche de Gramont from The New York Times, April 18, 1999, Life Style of Homo Cinematicus - The New York Times 

A murder mystery largely inspired by Truffaut’s love of Hitchcock, the first movie made after publishing his 1966 book-length interview of Hitchcock, starring the incomparable Jeanne Moreau as Julie Kohler, a bride whose husband is accidentally killed on the steps of the church on her wedding day, spending the rest of the film tracking down each of the five men responsible to exact her own brand of punishment.  While her determination is cool and collected, remaining alarmingly precise, showing little hint of backing down, going to extreme means to befriend each of the men, using her feminine guile and allure to appeal to them before turning the tables, using sex as a weapon, only telling them her name at the moment of their death.  Adapted from a 1940 novel by Cornell Woolrich (aka William Irish), also known as the “master of suspense,” author of two dozen crime novels and more than 200 short stories, with 40 of them turning into films, mostly film noirs, with even more adapted into television dramas.  Woolrich also wrote the short story It Had to Be Murder that was adapted into Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW (1954), with Truffaut utilizing similar themes and visual motifs that are reminiscent of Hitchcock, conceived as a B-movie film noir, while also using his frequent composer, Bernard Herrmann, to write his musical score.  Despite this connection, the major flaw and missing ingredient is any hint of actual suspense, which essentially defined Hitchcock pictures, as viewers know early on that she will methodically carry out her murderous plan, where only the details remain uncertain.  Truffaut transformed the novel, however, which cleverly reveals a strange, subversive twist at the end revealing the men were innocent of the crime, but she murders them anyway, with the author demonstrating sympathy for the murdered victims.  There’s no sympathy here, as Truffaut turns each of the men into despicable characters, lecherous chauvinist pigs with no regard whatsoever for women, with Moreau a femme fatale protagonist, a precursor to the Charles Bronson DEATH WISH (1974) avenging angel role, yet also Quentin Tarantino’s female-centered revenge saga KILL BILL Pt’s 1 and 2 (2003, 2004) which also features a vengeful bride crossing names off a list, relishing each individual instance of revenge with carefully planned and carried out missions of mercy, where putting them out of their misery has an absurdly feminist sensibility to it, becoming a fully developed critique of sexism and male vanity, turning into the darkest of comedies, where the final shot is strangely appealing, as it’s likely to put a perverse smile on your face.  Slammed by American critics when it was released (yet celebrated in France), claiming it wasn’t sufficiently enough like Hitchcock, with others charging it was unlike Truffaut, it was largely misunderstood, as feminism and the women’s movement hadn’t yet caught on culturally, so it was a bit ahead of its times, probably deserving of a new contemporary reappraisal, where it may be viewed as a scornfully cruel, sardonic comedy.  But the opening is another story, clearly an homage to Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964), as Moreau is about to throw herself out the window in a suicidal impulse, stopped by her pleading mother before packing her bags that include neatly stacked piles of money and leaving under mysterious circumstances (quickly escaping on the other side of the train), not revealing where she’s going or why, leaving no trace of herself.  Clearly, however, she’s determined, as demonstrated by her thwarted attempts to bribe the desk clerk to allow her into the room of her first victim, Claude Rich as Bliss, a contemptuous playboy who has a depraved habit of tape recording his fiancée crossing her legs, playing it back for his like-minded friend Corey (Jean-Claude Brialy).  Both men continue to hit on girls even at a party on the eve of his wedding, set in his high-rise apartment, with Moreau arriving unannounced, dressed all in white, with Bliss making a beeline towards her, simply unable to stop himself from flirting with an attractive woman.  This fatal flaw is what dooms him, as she lures him to an outer balcony, revealing her identity only at the moment she pushes him off the ledge, The Bride Wore Black (1968) - Murder on the Balcony scene YouTube (3:02).

The highly theatrical murder gives one pause, stretching the bounds of credibility, but she’s soon on the quest for another, where the degree of artifice on display is particularly pronounced, foregoing the stark naturalism of his earlier films, instead creating the visual look of a fairy tale.  The second victim is Coral (Michel Bouquet), a lonely bachelor in a dingy one-roomed apartment with photos of pin-up girls on the walls, notably behind on his rent, with Truffaut ingeniously introducing him through the room only, as Moreau accidentally on purpose wanders in while the female landlord is cleaning up, stealing a drink from his hidden stock, refilling it with water.  Moreau meticulously describes the man who lives in the apartment simply by observing minute details, doing a first-rate psychological exposé of the man, revealing a pathetic display of an uneventful life, yet doing it in a playful manner so as not to draw attention to herself, avoiding any and all suspicion.  She anonymously sends him a ticket to a musical performance, meeting him there, dressed in formal black with a white overcoat, avoiding names and motives, but basically dangles him on a string where he’ll do anything she asks, inviting herself into his apartment the next evening, providing a syringe-injected poison-filled bottle of Arak for appetizers, bringing along her own record for musical entertainment, Vivaldi - Mandolin Concerto in C Major, RV 425, I. Allegro ... YouTube (2:48), with his murder becoming the main course as he collapses on the floor, begging for mercy, identifying herself by name just prior to his demise.  A flashback to her wedding day reveals an odd assortment of Friday night friends, five single bachelors who comprise an informal hunting party, also playing cards to relieve their boredom, drinking together in a hotel overlooking the church, where a loaded rifle accidentally goes off killing the groom, leaving Moreau the distraught widow, where each of them vows to never speak of it or see one another again, going their separate ways.  Even after her arrest, carefully calculated between the fourth and fifth murders, fully confessing to the earlier four murders, the police are scratching their heads to uncover a motive, which is revealed only to viewers.  Free of fear or remorse, Moreau has a workmanlike obsession with carrying out her mission, which requires a great deal of flexibility on her part, as she has to lull these men into feeling perfectly safe with an utter stranger, using deception along with her feminine intuition to understand the men’s mindset, staying one step ahead of them, making them feel at ease before blindsiding them with something they never anticipate.  None require greater improvisational skills than ensaring victim number three, Rene Morane (Michael Lonsdale), first coddling up to their young child after school, ensuring his trust, before luring the wife out of the home with an alarmist telegram suggesting illness in the family, then sweeping into the family home, filling the maternal void under the pretenses she’s the child’s teacher, cooking a family meal, allowing the husband to read the nightly newspaper and fulfill his patriarchal duty, as he’s a politican running for office, creating a smokescreen of bourgeois contentment, then playing a game of hide and seek before putting the unsuspecting young child to bed.  Only then does she proceed, sending Morane into an enclosed hiding space under the stairs searching for her supposedly missing ring before locking him in, sealing the air vents with duct tape, effectively recreating Edgar Allen Poe’s The Cask of the Amontillado. 

Shot by the legendary Raoul Coutard, who also shot Godard’s 60’s films through WEEKEND (1967), apparently there were problems on the set, where Coutard and Truffaut had endless fights about how the film should be shot, disillusioned apparently by the lighting and choices in color, and by all indications Moreau simply ignored Truffaut’s instructions and worked on her own, literally transforming the film, elevating her performance to a different stratosphere, a picture of detached emotions and utter disregard, yet Truffaut nearly disowned the film afterwards, dissatisfied with the results, coming at a particularly difficult time in his life, ending an 8-year marriage to Madeleine Morgenstern, developing an intimate relationship with Jeanne Moreau, who was ending her own distraught relationship with ex-lover Pierre Cardin, who designed all her costumes, dressing her only in black or white (in a color film).  Ingeniously, Truffaut makes her appear, as if out of nowhere, like an apparition, a Hitchcockian device stolen from the Mrs. Danver character of Rebecca (1940), as you never see her knock on a door or enter a room, she’s just mysteriously there, where the dark subject matter of the film stands in stark contrast to the sun-drenched colors of the Riviera in southern France, becoming one of the ultimate revenge films, right alongside Kieslowski’s THREE COLORS: WHITE (1994), both steeped in a perverse absurdity.  Even though Moreau idealizes her deceased husband, friends since childhood, as evidenced by a flashback sequence showing them playing bride and groom, viewing him as the only decent man on earth, her world crumbles down after his loss, where the only thing holding her life together is the excrutiating detail needed to carry out her master plan in secrecy.  The masculine boorishness of the victims is a key underlying factor, as it allows viewers to sympathize with a cold-blooded killer on the loose, totally assured that these men really did murder her husband.  When the actual schoolteacher is wrongfully charged with Morane’s murder, Moreau reveals she does have a moral conscience (at least when it comes to women) by telephoning the police with precise details only the killer would know, while urging them to release the innocent teacher.  The police arrest the next victim on theft charges, Delvaux (Daniel Boulanger), the man who actually pulled the trigger on her wedding day, at the exact moment she’s about to shoot him, discreetly retreating safely out of sight, moving on to the next victim, Fergus (Charles Denner), spending the most time with a bohemian artist and self-proclaimed connoisseur of women, a condescending gallery painter who is also a cavalier skirt chaser, objectively viewing women for their precise body measurements, arrogantly proud of his accuracy simply by sight.  He’s a man who can’t stop talking about his sexual conquests, blabbing nonstop while he paints, while he has a bathroom floor carpeted by falsies, a gift from an overstocked salesman.  Presumably sent from a modeling agency, she’s the wrong type, but perfectly fits an unfinished earlier period where he has her posing as Diana, goddess of the hunt, decked out in a skimpy white tunic, armed with a bow and arrow.  Her sensual allure catches him offguard, yet he’s completely captivated, so psychologically obsessed that he paints a nude painting of her on the wall of his bedside in the middle of the night.  Jean-Claude Brialy visits the studio as a friend of Fergus, noticing some familiarity with the model, but he can’t place it.  By the time he figures it out it’s too late.  Manipulating her body into position, the artist himself actually sets the pose, aiming the arrow straight at him, where it’s only a matter of time before she strikes, stealing away before she is caught.  Surprisingly, she allows herself to be caught, where her open confession of four murders confounds the police, intrigued by her intelligence and lack of remorse, showing no signs whatsoever of contrition. The final episiode is the shortest, yet also the most exacting, startlingly assured, as it has a way of punctuating everything that comes before, deliciously dark and morbid, following her pursuits even inside prison, where she wordlessly goes about her business with the severity and calm assurance of a contemplative monk serving their monastic vows to perfection.        

Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool

Miles with Charlie Parker in 1947

 

Miles with Frances Taylor

Miles with Gil Evans

Miles with John Coltrane

Bill Evans (left to right), Miles, Cannonball Adderley, and Coltrane

Miles with Cicely Tyson

Director Stanley Nelson

MILES DAVIS:  BIRTH OF THE COOL – made for TV               B                                         USA  (114 mi)  2020  d:  Stanley Nelson

Listen.  The greatest feeling I ever had in my life — with my clothes on — was when I first heard Diz and Bird together in St. Louis, Missouri, back in 1944.  I’ve come close to matching the feeling of that night, but I’ve never quite got there.  I’m always looking for it, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play.                                                                       —Miles Davis, opening line from The Autobiography of Miles Davis, with help from Quincy Troupe, 1989

Documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson makes another PBS American Masters film, moving from one radical piece of black history, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015), to another, this time documenting the life of jazz great Miles Davis, one of the most innovative and influential jazz musicians of the twentieth century.  Using much of the narration taken directly from The Autobiography of Miles Davis (421 pages), published in 1989 with help from Quincy Troupe, spoken by longtime TV actor Carl Lumbly in a raspy voice meant to sound like that of Miles, it’s a fairly straightforward documentary style that mainstreams an unconventional artist into a conventional format, easy to digest, wall-to-wall music playing in the background, plenty of vintage photographs, never really delving under the surface, instead standardizing his legacy.  Since the story is told by the artist himself, it has a ring of authenticity, but what’s lacking is material that refutes his greatness or offers any divulging opinions, as it’s basically a puff piece celebrating his status of jazz royalty.  While that was never in dispute, there were quite a few musicians who had their run-ins with Miles, Charles Mingus among them, finding him too egotistic and wrapped up in himself, making too many demands of others, where he refused to play with him after some early sessions, finding his irascible personality too easily provoked, as there was always tension in the room.  Jazz music, on the other hand, usually took the tension out of the air, so at least as a young artist there was an enigma associated with his name (An open letter to miles davis — CHARLES MINGUS).  Yet you won’t find any comments from Mingus in this film, or Monk, who Miles harassed and tried to change or alter his peculiar playing style, wanting the piano to accompany his trumpet in a supporting role, a vision not shared by Monk, to his credit.  So none of the abrasive moments butting heads with other jazz musicians are mentioned here.  Instead it appears that his career was all smooth sailing, where a child prodigy simply took the celebratory Mozartian road to success, where everything he touched was beloved by the public.  Only Stanley Crouch, a black cultural critic known for his jazz criticism, takes issue with the music he’s playing late in his career, wondering out loud why people are drawn to it, as at least in his mind there’s nothing about it that feels the least bit interesting.  And this touches on what’s not mentioned in the film, how jazz as a commercial form was largely directed towards white audiences, as they’re the ones buying the records, while jazz as an art form is a uniquely black cultural expression.  Late in his career, Miles wanted to be a rock star, doing live shows, like Hendrix or the Rolling Stones, selling out venues that appealed to mostly white audiences.  Certainly some purists in the jazz industry would call that selling out to make a buck, yet because he’s Miles Davis, legendary jazz artist, no one questions his motives.  The almighty dollar certainly plays into this as a driving motivation, yet so is success and popularity.  Miles wanted to be as popular as Michael Jackson or Prince.  In that vein, the difference between the unembellished portrayal of Monk in Charlotte Zwerin’s Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988) and Miles in this film couldn’t be more profound, as Monk was never searching for the money or accolades associated with winning over white audiences. 

Something of a contrast to Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead (2015), showing Davis in one of his dark periods, which veered into the ridiculous and surreal, Nelson’s film may lack flair or originality, but it does provide much of the music that Miles is known for, even if it’s presented in a greatest hits manner.  Davis was born in Alton, Illinois, but soon moved to East St. Louis where his father set up a dental practice, owning 200 acres of land in Arkansas, while his grandfather owned acres of nearby farmland as well, spending his summers there, so he didn’t grow up poor, as his family was among the wealthiest black families in the region, but he witnessed his father physically abuse his mother, a trait he inherited in his own relationships with women, repeating the same mistakes, becoming a major flaw in his character that was often overlooked.  He was gifted a trumpet by his father at age 13, playing in the high school marching band, while also playing in local bands.  While still in high school, he filled a seat on a band called Eddie Randle’s Rhumboogie Orchestra, becoming the musical director, but the most significant event after high school was sitting in on the Billy Eckstine Band on tour in St. Louis, featuring both Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, where the three of them comprise the future of modern jazz, Groovin High - Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie (5:14).  This gave Miles the musical inspiration he needed, knowing his future would lead him to 52nd Street in New York, known as the Mecca of Jazz clubs, with various establishments lining both sides of the street.  His father urged him to attend Juilliard School, learning music theory, but he hit the clubs in the evenings, eventually dropping out to join a bebop quintet with Charlie Parker, who struggled with mental health issues and heroin addiction problems, gaining plenty of weight, going on alcohol binges, where his physical condition just deteriorated.  So he worked with a collection of LA artists, including Gil Evans, who specialized in small orchestra arrangements, both seemingly bringing out the best in one another, giving birth to his first legendary recording session in 1949-50 with Birth of the Cool, but it was a trio of later albums that helped separate Miles from the field, Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy and Bess (1958), and Sketches of Spain (1960), all examples of re-inventing the limits of jazz parameters using non-jazz music, deeply introspective, master of the muted sound, with each showcasing a more lyrical, mournful anguish rarely heard in jazz.  Often overlooked in Miles’ career is the success he had in Europe in the mid 50’s, which embraced American jazz music after the war as a sign of freedom, where black musicians were more appreciated in Europe for their artistry, as opposed to the continued legacy of racism in America, with Miles Davis greeted alongside the likes of Picasso and Jean-Paul Sartre, all celebrated for expanding the realms of consciousness.  During a brief Parisian tour in 1958, film director Louis Malle asked Miles to improvise a musical score for his latest film, Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud) (1958), an existential film noir starring Jeanne Moreau about distanced lovers who never meet, with Miles improvising on the spot by watching the completed film footage in the recording studio, where his music plays as Moreau wanders the streets endlessly at night, perfectly capturing her loneliness and growing sorrowful detachment, Miles Davis - Générique - YouTube (2:49). 

Among his greatest collaborations is working with John Coltrane in Kind of Blue (1959) prior to Coltrane’s own break-out ascendancy to becoming a legendary star, but also Julian “Cannonball” Adderley and the compositional genius of Bill Evans before they formed their own bands, where the intimate setting allowed each musician their own space, with Miles providing a spare outline of a melody, becoming what is regarded as the greatest jazz album ever recorded and still the best-selling jazz album of all time (Kind of Blue: how Miles Davis made the greatest jazz album in ...), largely due to its accessibility, appealing to audiences that aren’t necessarily jazz devotees, as it perfectly captures the spontaneity of the moment, Miles Davis - So What (Official Video) - YouTube (9:06).  Let’s not forget the recent Barry Jenkins film based on a James Baldwin novel, If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), which prominently features the achingly sad Blue in Green by. Miles Davis - YouTube (5:37) in one of the more harrowing scenes.  As Coltrane demanded his own independence, however, wanting his own spotlight, Miles had to re-invent himself once more in the mid 60’s, creating a quintet with relatively unknown talent, adding Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock to the mix, and a 17-year old drummer extraordinaire in Tony Williams, priding themselves on rehearsing in performance, as they wanted to capture the explosive freshness each time, “Footprints” - The Miles Davis Quintet Live In ... - YouTube (9:08).  And when jazz lost its popularity to the cultural fascination of rock music, Miles re-invented himself again going totally electric in one of his most neglected albums in 1969, In a Silent Way, which is never mentioned, yet rivals his best work, introducing jazz fusion.  The film gushes over one of his more demonstrative phases, using echo and reverberation effects in crafting an experimental new sound, Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (Live In Copenhagen ... - YouTube (15:34).  Miles experienced his own Rodney King-like beating at the hands of the New York Police Department, standing in front of a club where he was the headliner, smoking a cigarette, but was ordered by cops to move along, which he refused to do, leaving his suit splattered with his own blood while his head was battered by nightsticks.  He suffered his own battles with drug dependency, especially in dealing with the constant pain from hip surgery gone wrong, but he had several episodes with drug addiction, which was a contributing factor in ending his marriage to dancer Frances Taylor, who may be the most welcome presence here, where they were the talk of the town, a chic and sophisticated New York City couple, both extremely fashion conscientious and both extremely talented, where her face appears on an album cover for Someday My Prince Will Come.  But drugs and alcohol, a toxic mix, only accentuated his jealousy, not wanting anyone else to show any extra affection to his wife, showing up in rehearsals for West Side Story and taking her home, refusing to allow her to have her own career, then belting her to the floor when she happened to mention she thought Quincy Jones was cute, the first of several instances, eventually walking out the door for good.  Plenty of faces offer commentary throughout, none offering any definitive historical view, so in equal measure they all weigh in during certain stages of his life, including his son Erin Davis and nephew Vince Wilburn, former girlfriends French singer/actor Juliette Gréco, Marguerite Cantú (mother of Erin), and painter Jo Gelbard, with brief appearances from Betty Mabry and Cicely Tyson, but also childhood friends and musical collaborators Gil Evans, Jimmy Heath, Jimmy Cobb, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Ron Carter, but also Marcus Miller and Lenny White.  Quincy Jones makes an appearance and Clive Davis, manager Mark Rothbaum, also concert organizer George Wein, who recalls how influential it was for Miles to play at the Newport Jazz Festival, which was like a trial run for signing with Columbia records.  Perhaps most surprising is the adoration expressed by Carlos Santana, but also reflections offered from scholars Farah Jasmine Griffin and Tammy L. Kernodle, which reveal surprisingly little.  However his own dire reflections carry over through the end credits, revealing what could amount to a fitting epitaph, “When God punished you, it’s not that you don’t get what you want.  You get everything you want and there’s no time left.”