After watching auteur film maker François Truffaut's Film Noir Shoot the Pianist I decided to take a look at his IMDb page,where I spotted a revenge psychological Film Noir Thriller which appears to have "inspired" a number of recent movies.With Truffaut being a pretty big name,I was surprised that the only DVD (with English Subtitles) out was a French import edition,which led to me getting ready to lift the veil of the bride.The plot:Attempting suicide by diving out of a window, Julie Kohler is stopped by her mum.Gathering her composure,Kohler gathers a notebook with five names and 5 piles of cash.Packing everything up,Kohler tells her mum that she is going on a long holiday.Visiting a luxury apartment block,Kohler gets the person at the front desk to reveal when and where a man called Bliss is having his stag party.Greeting all the guests at his stag party,Bliss finds his eyes being drawn to a mysterious women.Unable to take his mind off the women, (who none of the guests recognise) Bliss decides to go up and talk to her.Introduceing herself,Kohler gets Bliss to join her on the balcony,so that they can speak privately.Whilst Bliss says that he has never seen her before,Kohler puts her scarf round a tree in front of the balcony,and tells Bliss to climb over and get it.As Bliss climbs over the balcony,Kohler reveals that they actually met 5 years ago at her wedding,and pushes Bliss to his death. Leaving Bliss's dying stag party behind,Kohler sets her sights on giving four other men a late wedding present from a dressed in black bride.View on the film:Married to a "troubled" legacy, (from Truffaut & cinematographer Raoul Coutard having vicious arguments over the style of the movie for the whole production,which led to lead Jeanne Moreau having to direct the rest of the cast,to Trauffaut to later calling the title "A disappointment"!) Truffaut is still able to serve up a smoking hot dish of revenge.Whilst not featuring as much social commentary as his "French New Wave" work, Truffaut & Jean-Louis Richard's adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's novel does slyly make each of the 5 guys on Kohler's death wish list be rooted in cosy upper/middle- class lifestyles,with the "tidy" image that they all offer allowing each of them to cover their deadly pasts.Taking an episodic approach to Kohler's revenge,the writers brilliantly take their time in allowing Kohler's attacks to become increasingly harsh,with Kohler's initial playfulness being burnt away to reveal a merciless femme fatale.Spending time with each of the 5, Truffaut and Richard give each segment its own unique Neo- Noir edge,from Delvaux's grubby car dealing,to Morane's upstanding family life bubbling away into darkness.Keeping away from unwrapping all of Kohler's mysterious past,the writers delicately open up brief glimpses into Kohler's past,which give the title a tense mood,as the flashbacks become threaded in Kohler's search for revenge.Despite his comments later about the movie,director François Truffaut and cinematographer Raoul Coutard give the title a ravishingly ultra- stylised Film Noir blushing bride.Backed by a superb score by Bernard Herrmann which transforms wedding bells into a doom-laden anthem, Truffaut nods to "The master of suspense" with charismatic enthusiasm, as Truffaut follows Kohler's revenge attacks with dazzling tracking shots which follow Kohler setting her plans,to tense,tightly held shots sinking one of the guys into the permanent darkness that he helped to push Kohler into.Giving the revenge Film Noir a touch of dour Gothic with Kohler's alluring black and white dresses, Truffaut spreads rich frosty reds across the title,which wonderfully peel open Kohler's (mostly) cold emotions for her victims.Given the challenge of directing the rest of the cast during production,the beautiful Jeanne Moreau gives an excellent performance as Kohler.Showing pure joy in the flashback,Moreau makes sure that the ghost of the joy always stays at the front of the title,as Kohler glides into Film Noir hell.Spending lots of time with each victim before they meet their end,Moreau strikes a perfect balance in pulling Kohler's tormented nerves across the screen,whist keeping a sense of mysterious,icy femme fatale deeply linked to Kohler,as the bride walks out in black.

I was looking forward to viewing this film but came away feeling quite hollow. The main problem for me is the hard-to-believe plot - Julie does not display any outstanding "people skills" or womanly wiles but is able to insinuate herself into the lives of the five men she is after with all the ease in the world - it seems all she has to do is appear and the men fall over themselves to accept her and do what she says.In addition, as another reviewer has pointed out, a major hole in the plot is how she managed to track down the five men - this is never explained, probably because the viewer is expected to blindly believe she has done it somehow and concentrate on the revenge she carries out.I would have expected in 1968 that film makers had far better special effects at their disposal than the childish sounds of the thunderstorm that have been used.The last guy she kills (presumably) in the prison - why is he still wearing the clothes he was arrested in when every other prisoner is in black prison uniform, even Julie, who went to prison after he did? There would have been far more subtle ways of making sure that the viewer recognised him.

This is Francois Truffaut's best attempt at doing a Hitchcock film (Lesser efforts include "Mississippi Mermaid" and "Confidentially Yours"). It helps that he's got a story by Cornell Woolrich ("Rear Window") and a score by Bernard Herrmann, whose music can elevate even the trashiest films ("Joy In The Morning," "It's Alive"). "The Bride Wore Black" borrows heavily from several Hitchcock films. Julie Kohler, the main character, resembles "Marnie," a cold, calculating protagonist on a fiendish mission. Both are seen packing a suitcase with new items of clothing, traveling on trains to new destinations and changing hair styles and colors. The plot device of revealing a secret to the audience halfway through in flashback comes from "Vertigo" as do the many unexplained contrivances that test our suspension of disbelief. The film is entertaining largely due to the strange atmosphere it creates and the stylized performance by Jeanne Moreau, seen in nothing but black and white Pierre Cardin outfits. Her usual dour expression suits the character, though she actually smiles for a change on a few occasions. The ending, however far-fetched, serves to satisfy the entire premise. It may take repeated viewings to fully catch all the subtle and not-so-subtle complexities.

This film is an excellent example of a revenge thriller which follows Julie Kohler, the bride of the title, as she exacts revenge on those responsible for her husband's death on their wedding day. We aren't immediately told what happened to make her want to kill the men concerned but learn throughout the film.When we are first introduced to Julie Kohler we see her attempting to throw herself from a window but this suicide attempt is prevented and soon she says that she is going away. She boards a train bound for Paris but promptly gets off on the other side and walks over the tracks to the other platform. She then seeks out a man who she only knows by name and lures him to a balcony during a party she has gatecrashed. After tricking him into climbing over the rail to retrieve a scarf she has "accidentally" dropped she says her name and no more then pushes him to his death. As she proceeds through her list of targets we learn why she wants to kill them and how the people who seemingly have no connection came to kill her husband.The film is fairly gripping and well acted, especially by Jeanne Moreau in the title role. It does have one or two plot holes, the main one being how did she learn who was responsible for her husband's death when the police hadn't found any of them. That can be forgiven though, I think as spending time on that would have detracted from the main story.I would recommend this to anybody who likes revenge thrillers even if they don't usually like non-English films, I'd forgotten I was reading subtitles a few minutes in.