Touches You

hyped garbage

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

I was surprised that so many people don't like The Bride Wore Black and that even the director, François Truffaut, was encouraged to downgrade the film a few years after it was released. Just about all the complaints center on the Jeanne Moreau character and how she happened to track down the identities of the men in the party that killed her husband, whereas the police drew a blank. The "how" is simply explained. The Jeanne Moreau character is a woman. To me, she is only moderately attractive, but a woman is a woman is a woman! Almost all men will do almost anything to bed a woman – especially an attractive woman. But in most cases even a woman who is unattractive is preferable than no woman at all. So a slim and beautifully dressed fashion-plate – even if she is 40 years old – virtually holds all the cards. The first thing she doubtless did was to track down the residents, neighbors and owner of the room from which the fatal shot was fired. The police obviously had no success at all with the owner. But a beautiful, super-sexy woman could make even the dumb to speak! So, as I said, I have no worries at all with the "how". To me it's so obvious that we don't need any boring explanations. I've watched the movie three times and on each occasion I've been knocked out by its daring atmosphere, its thrilling performances and its inexorable pace. Available on an excellent M-G-M DVD.

Bride Wore Black, The (1968) *** (out of 4) Truffaut's homage to Hitchcock deals with a mysterious woman (Jeanne Moreau) who, after a failed suicide, decides to track down and kill the five men responsible for her husband's death on their wedding day. Needless to say, this film was pretty much remade by Quentin Tarantino in the two KILL BILL films but you can see the films influence go even further with various exploitation movies including Jess Franco's SHE KILLED IN ECSTACY as well as the notorious I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. I think this film works very well as a homage but doesn't work too good on its own. What I was shocked to find is that there's very little emotion of any kind here. There's really no drama, no one to really care for, no suspense and very little mystery. I'm really not sure what the point of the film was except perhaps for Truffaut to show his appreciation to Hitchcock and try to copy a film like the mystery master would have made. The movie has some very good stuff in it but again, I'm sure it could have been better had a few things been changed. The five murders are pretty much like separate short films and this is something I liked. I like how all five murders appear just like their own movies but this does lead to one of my complaints, which is the running time. It really seemed like the movie was padded with needless scenes and stuff that could have been handled in less time. I found all the murders to be quite fun in their own right and that includes the ending, which really worked even though I've read it was different than what was in the novel. Another major plus is the performance by Moreau who manages to be very believable in the role. I thought she came off perfect as the quiet assassin even though you could look into her eyes and see the pain she's feeling for her dead husband. The supporting players, mainly the five men, are quite good as well, although none of them really stick out as being great. The Bernard Hermann score does a good job at reminding us of his previous work with Hitchcock and there are plenty of nice references to the master's films.

Jeanne Moreau is the bride in "The Bride Wore Black," a 1968 film directed by Francois Truffaut. It's a Hitchcockian homage, with innuendos of that director's work throughout. Moreau is a woman who marries her childhood sweetheart, but as they leave the church, he is shot and killed. She sets out to avenge his death. More of the story unfolds with each murder.This is a very stylish, mesmerizing film with a score by Bernard Hermann, who did so many scores for Hitchcock. This score reminds me of "Vertigo" - in fact, the film reminds me of "Vertigo" more than other Hitchcock films: the opening scene at the window is reminiscent of Stewart and his partner chasing the man in the beginning of "Vertigo"; the flashbacks as Moreau remembers what happened that fateful day, as when Kim Novak goes back to her room and writes to Stewart; the portrait that looks like Moreau in the artist's studio - shades of the Carlotta portrait.As others have pointed out, "The Bride Wore Black" asks us to make some leaps in logic, otherwise known as plot holes. The biggest is how the Moreau character knew whom to go after. I could have lived with the others and somehow justified them in my own mind, but that's a biggie. The twist ending is both cold-blooded and remarkable.The charismatic actress Jeanne Moreau is perfectly cast as a determined, cold woman with one goal. Her character is clever, attractive, and as determined as they come.An excellent film that keeps the viewer engrossed throughout. It was wonderful to see it on TCM after not seeing it for many years. I wish it were available on DVD.

The Bride Wore Black (1968) is noted as being director François Truffaut's gleeful homage/pastiche of the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, with the usual characteristics of deception and retribution, cool cinematography and a lush score by none other than Bernard Hermann all being co-opted alongside some nicely subtle allusions to the broader aspects of the thriller and mystery genres. Whereas it would have been fairly easy for the filmmaker to produce a work that was a shot-for-shot recreation of something that Hitchcock might have done - like for example with De Palma or Van Sant - Truffaut takes the familiar style and iconography of Hitchcock's work - in particular from films like Strangers on a Train (1951), To Catch a Thief (1955) and most prominently Marnie (1964) - and fashions a film that is, on the one hand, an affectionate ode to the filmmaker and, on the other hand, a cruel lampoon. In doing so, the director is able to produce a film that is not only interesting in terms of story and character, but often very funny too.I was genuinely quite surprised by the use of humour here. I expected from the plot-outline that the film would be incredibly dour and austere but that really isn't the case; with the mixture of lurid, almost B-movie style subject matter, revenge and farce managing to come together fairly well for the most part, as Truffaut tinkers with the expected codes and conventions of the thriller genre in much the same way that Antonioni did with the much superior masterpiece Blowup (1966). Like Blowup, the film can be seen as something of an "anti-thriller", or a film that sets up a number of potentially electrifying Hitchcockian like set pieces and then continually thwarts them - or indeed, forgets about them completely - as the mechanics of the plot push us further and further away from the more recognisable aspects of the story at hand. Whenever we imagine that a scene will play out to our usual expectations, with Hermann's orchestrations and the inventive camera work of Godard's regular cinematographer Raoul Coutard setting the scene, something else happens that throws the film completely off course. For example, in one particular scene, in which our central character stalks one of her victims through the junkyard where he works, we get Truffaut setting up a series of shots that continually teases us with the slow-build of the sequence, the cut-away to the gun and the impending moment before the expected gunshot and then - unexpectedly - the police arrive and arrest the man before any retribution can be taken.This idea of setting up something potentially very thrilling and exciting, only to then subvert it by way of knowing farce and arch genre references is used throughout The Bride Wore Black, creating an odd juxtaposition between light comedy and cold-blooded murder that probably won't be to all tastes. Apparently the critics of the time hated it, and indeed, Truffaut himself would denounce the film as one of his worst just a few years later, perhaps as a reaction to the knowing tone and the flippant games being played with the more recognisable cinematic conventions. Obviously, Truffaut was a huge fan of Hitchcock, and indeed, one of the first critics to really look at his films within a serious historical context, but all the same, the satirical sideswipes at Hitchcock's work and the evidence of homage is often quite cutting and not always as complimentary as we might expect. The final shot for example, which is indeed very clever and filled with ideas of visual wit, is at the same time blunt to the point of almost going out of its way to lampoon the ending of some of Hitchcock's earlier films like Saboteur (1942). Then we have the ultimate revelation of the event that drove the character to seek revenge and the almost broadly comical rendering of the scene and the complete disregard for any kind of logic and reason.Was the reason that Truffaut denounced the film simply because he felt it was uncomplimentary, almost mocking of Hitchcock's work, or did he simply feel that the games within the narrative and the combination of murder and farce were simply unsuccessful on this particular project? Regardless, the film succeeds on an entirely perverse level, as we watch Jeanne Moreau step into the role of the iconic "Hitchcock blonde" and plot bloody revenge on those that have wronged her. Some have drawn comparisons with Tarantino's epic Kill Bill (2003-2004), which are apt given the basic outline of the plot and certain elements of the iconography, though Tarantino claims to be unfamiliar with the film in question. Although the broader ramifications of the narrative remain vague and enigmatic even through to the end, the fun of The Bride Wore Black is not in its characters or storytelling capabilities, but in the gleeful subversion of the iconography of the Hollywood thriller by way of the Nouvelle Vague and of course, those constant allusions to Hitchcock and his work.