Overrated and overhyped

How sad is this?

Excellent but underrated film

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

IMDb classifies this as "Crime, Drama, Mystery". If one insists to call this a crime movie, then I would have to say that it is extraordinarily naive and unrealistic; the plot is essentially juvenile. Compare it to, say, Munich, that is also a "methodological revenge movie". In the latter, every step is realistically planned whereas in this movie every action in childish . The guy and the scarf? The poison through the cork? The duct tape? The arrow? The knife? Gimme a break.However, let's take out the "crime" characterization, and replace it by "melodrama". Then we get an entertaining movie with great performance by Jeanne Moreau.So, calling this a mystery-melodrama, we can sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.P.S. In every movie. especially in French ones, every killer easily gets hold of a poison whose couple of drops are fatal. The only poison I can get is a dosage of large fries at a local fast food restaurant.

To really take in this film, you have to watch it consciously disassociating yourself from the legend of genius that is the legacy of Francois Truffaut. So this is Truffaut's homage to Hitchcock?! This is a script a boyish, 12 year old Hitch might have written, read the finished product through once, and thrown it giggling into the wastebasket. The Bernard Hermann score seems a melodramatic intrusion, musical phrases and tonal pastiche; something that Hermann pulled from a grab bag of discarded "mood" compositions. Hitchcock females played detached, cool blooded seductresses. Here Truffaut has deformed this template presenting Jeanne Moreau as a wooden female mannequin exclusively captivating men simply through displaying her couture wardrobe and coiffed hair. Hitchcock's women were aloof allures, but each invariably had vulnerabilities threatening to surface. We see no cracks like this in Moreau's character; she's a stylish popsicle. All this doesn't speak well for the male sex, each of whom immediately fall for her like dumb animals aroused by the scent of a woman; close proximity is an open call to an entanglement of bodies in heat. This simplistic stereotype of male and female is not wholly incongruous with the ambiguous, improbable plot line. Julie Kohler, the bride, while not left at the alter, is left a widow minutes after the ceremony, her new husband falling dead on the church steps, killed by a shot gun blast from out of nowhere. Her devastation is total. Dissuaded from suicide by her mother, she plots a vendetta against those responsible for the killing. Whether… or even how… she learns of the circumstances behind her husband's death, or discovers the identities of the five men responsible…is never explained. She goes about her business of being a femme fatale killing machine programmed for revenge. This is a silly, self-indulgent offering from that most self-indulgent of French New Wave film directors, Francois Truffaut.

In 1968, Jeanne Moreau will... KILL FERGUS. Possibly. Truffaut's Hitchcock homage, which in turn led to Kill Bill, pays tribute more in style than in theme, as Moreau's widowed bride tracks down the five men responsible for her husband's death (I say "responsible", four of them get a pretty bum rap), amidst numerous clever directorial touches (like the camera snaking around the bushes in front a potential victim's house) and to the strains of Bernard Herrmann's superb score. It isn't deep, particularly credible or very well plotted, it's shot in the peculiar "pastel shade" fashion of so many European films of the '60s - that extends even to the actors' skin; it's difficult to distinguish between the many drawings of Moreau and the real thing - and there's a very silly death scene effect that is almost certainly not a joke, but for the most part it's fast-moving and fun, particularly if you like seeing lecherous Frenchmen being killed.

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.