The Bride Wore Black (1968)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

With This Ring, I Thee Dead

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

After publishing his influential book on Alfred Hitchcock, filmmaker François Truffaut took a novel by Cornell Woolrich (who wrote the story that provided the basis for Rear Window) and enlisted Hitchcock's favorite composer Bernard Herrmann, and made The Bride Wore Black. Although it's a deliberate tribute to Hitchcock, and it is appealingly stylish, it doesn't particularly seem very Hitchcockian. Jeanne Moreau plays the title bride, whose husband was murdered on their wedding day. Now she embarks upon an elaborate revenge plan, involving posing under false identities, seduction, and deceit, before she strikes her death blows. Moreau's icy quality works well here, and her cold-blooded cunning is far more interesting than an explosive rage would have been. Weirdly, the movie contains images that look ahead to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill (notably the bride writing down the names of her victims in a notebook), although Tarantino stated in a 2003 interview with a Japanese film magazine that — despite his vast viewing experience and his admiration for Truffaut and crime films — he had never seen this one.

Kino Lorber released it on a great-looking Blu-ray in 2023, including an archival commentary track by critics Julio Kirgo, Steven C. Smith, and Nick Redman (previously released on the 2015 Twilight Time disc), and a batch of trailers, most for other Truffaut titles.