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.        

Out 1: Spectre

Rivette (right) on location shooting Out 1 in Paris, 1970

 

Jacques Rivette

OUT 1: SPECTRE            B              

France  (255 mi)  1974  d:  Jacques Rivette

Rivette’s offshoot work extrapolated from his massive, near 13-hour, experimental tour de force Out 1 and Jacques Rivette R.I.P. (1971), which never had a release, existing more as a working copy, believing it was too unwieldy at that length, figuring there would be no audience for it at the time.  Instead Rivette struggled to whittle it down to a more manageable length, chose an alternate title, and released it in theaters with a run time of more than four hours.  While ostensibly using the same footage, it is recut and reconfigured in a totally different manner, making it near incomprehensible if you haven’t viewed the original.  Instead of relying upon lengthy shots that comprise the rhythm and improvisational uniqueness of the original, this is instead an example of rapid-fire editing, cutting off scenes before they develop, where it’s much more fragmentary.  Interjected throughout are the black and white stills that were used between segments to recap the action from the previous episode, but here they are edited into the overall narrative, often disrupting any established rhythm.  Not everyone will admire this jagged cutting technique, though some have hailed it as a “masterclass” of editing, as the unique improvisational method, considered a cinema of risk, with the actors continually stressed out, especially for such an extended period of time in the original, is barely noticeable here.  Some of the best parts of OUT 1 are not included in this shorter version, featuring few lengthy sequences, where there is an emphasis on building character that was absent in the original, which instead focused on duration, spending plenty of time with a group of actors from rival theater groups.  Storyline was barely noticeable in the original, while it’s essential here, completely altering the tone, adding an elevated sense of growing paranoia by the end.  Both versions follow the exploits of two Parisian theater groups, each rehearsing for a different Aeschylus Greek tragedy, one led by Thomas (Michael Lonsdale), the other by Lili (Michèle Moretti), both resorting to extremely unorthodox methods and techniques, where barely any time at all is spent with the actual text.  Nonetheless, what they’re doing is fairly self-explanatory.  More curious are the actions of two significant characters, Colin (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and Frédérique (Juliet Berto), both street con artists who go through an improvisatory charade pretending to be something that they’re not in order to extract money from strangers on the street, hitting on unsuspecting customers of street café’s and bars who are innocently relaxing and lulling about.  While their methods are clever, requiring a certain audacious charm, they are really the two innocent spirits who drive the story, as their normal routines are interrupted by something inexplicable, that may as well be destiny, but it appears to them disguised in coded letters that they receive that on the surface make no sense, where they have to uncover the underlying mystery.  These two figures intersect at the exact middle of the film without even acknowledging one another.  

With two characters criss-crossing throughout the city, Emilie (Bulle Ogier) lives a middle class life with two young children and a nanny, but her husband Igor has been missing for six months without a word, while she also runs a hippie boutique known as “L’Angle du Hasard,” or “Corner of Chance,” which is featured more prominently in this version.  Brightly decorated in psychedelic artworks and colors, where the use of color is particularly expressive, the store is a front for underground political activities, while occasionally they put out an underground newspaper, but mostly this appears to be a stoner hangout, the kind of place that existed in Berkeley or Haight-Asbury in America at the time, but was non-existent in Paris.  The behind-the-scenes shenanigans are more pointed throughout, with much more visibility, played with more suspense, where clues are secretly delivered to Colin, where the unasked question is bound to be why him?  How did he get selected?  How could they have predicted Colin’s behavior?  And how could that benefit the group?  Colin quickly deciphers the name of an underground group by the name of The Thirteen, which is mentioned in the preface to Balzac’s History Of The Thirteen (Histoire des Treize), revealing an unscrupulous secret society that controls the levers of power in Paris of the mid 1830’s.  As a result, Colin scours the city searching for evidence of this group, with surprisingly little to show for it, including a visit to a professed Balzac expert, none other than Éric Rohmer, preserved exactly as it was in the original, with an extended scene that is reduced to comic absurdity, as Colin’s character remains mute from the outset, with the professor showing reservation about any influence from this group.  Nonetheless, his search rattles the confidence of several of the people that he contacts, who resurface out of self-interest, protecting some hidden secret that is never identified.  In fact, this is accentuated by another scene involving Frédérique, who wanders into the home of a complete stranger, an upscale businessman playing chess with himself, Etienne (director Jacques Doniol-Lacroze), where she feigns an interest in chess, while her real intent is theft, seen rummaging through a desk drawer looking for money, but instead finds a collection of old letters that she stuffs into her purse.  As she investigates further, the letters allude to a secret underground group named the Thirteen.  Like Colin, she learns next to nothing other than a few mentioned names, like Pierre and Igor, where her attempts at blackmail are amateurish, especially when she contacts a prominent attorney, Lucie de Graffe (Françoise Fabian).

Only Emilie is willing to pay Frédérique for the missing letters, thinking it may lead to her husband’s whereabouts, but immediately realizes she’s been scammed, as they are all old letters.  Nonetheless, they mention some of the important players.  What’s especially different in this version is the ominous influence of unseen characters, namely Igor, the absent husband of Emilie, whose name is mentioned in the letters Frédérique absconds with, and Pierre, the apparent author of the letters sent to Colin.  Lucie and Etienne meet, along with Thomas, in a long walk along the Seine River, where we discover all five are members of a secret underground group that goes by the name of The Thirteen.  There is never any identification of their origins other than the suggestion that they abandoned shortly after the May 1968 protests in France, remaining dormant for several years, but people poking around asking about them have aroused fears they might be exposed.  Lucie is fairly certain nothing incriminating has leaked, but they each question the motives of Pierre, thinking this may be his attempt to get the group back together again.  While conspiracy theories drive this version, one other difference is the amount of time spent at “L’Angle du Hasard,” an address Colin figures out from deciphering clues from a Lewis Carroll poem, a revelation of such importance that he regains his voice for the occasion, only to become infatuated with Emilie (known as Pauline at the store), spending most of his idle time observing who comes in and out of the store while waiting for his chance with Pauline.  Both theatrical groups are undermined from within by what amounts to indifference, though Thomas attempts to revive interest by driving to the Normandy coast to find Sarah, Bernadette Lafont from Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes (1960) and Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) (1973), who happens to be living in a seaside home owned by Igor, suffering from writer’s block.  If anything, her presence only drives the group into extinction, while at the same time she’s driven to physically attack Emilie in her own home after discovering her intentions to send Pierre’s letters to the newspapers in hopes of fleshing out her missing husband.  But in this version, the boutique and the house on the coast take on special significance, as both are connected to members of The Thirteen, where members Lili and Emilie take drastic measures to protect their anonymity, while the ghostly presence of Pierre and Igor continues to wreak havoc with the rest of the members, where rumors swirl that Igor is still locked away somewhere inside his coastal house.  While there is a gathering of souls at the house, particular attention is paid to a single locked room, where there are suggestions the house is haunted.  Emilie wanders inside at one point when the door curiously opens, leading to what amounts to a dream sequence, where she sees an image of herself in a mirror casting infinite reflections.  As if the clouds have dissipated, this opens up an entirely new outlook, as unlike the disillusionment found in the original, with no tragic end to Frédérique (who is less prominently featured in this version), this couldn’t be more hopeful and optimistic, where the entire film feels more like a road movie following clues exploring the fragile psyches and discovering the whereabouts of the secretive Thirteen group members.