Noticias

François Truffaut’s ode to Hitchcock and Cornell Woolrich is an ice-cold femme revenge tale. Jeanne Moreau exacts retribution from five men who made her a widow on her wedding day. Truffaut winds it as tightly as a mousetrap, leaving Ms. Moreau’s psychology a mystery — feminists can debate whether the film is misogynistic. Raoul Coutard’s color cinematography is deceptively warm and inviting; the film’s biggest boost comes from Bernard Herrmann’s powerful music score.

The Bride Wore Black

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1968 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 107 min. / Street Date February 14, 2023 / La mariée était en noir / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Michel Bouquet, Jean-Claude Brialy, Charles Denner, Claude Rich, Michael Lonsdale, Daniel Boulanger, Alexandra Stewart, Sylvine Delannoy, Luce Fabiole, Michèle Montfort.

Cinematography: Raoul Coutard

Production Designer: Pierre Guffroy

Film Editor: Claudine Bouché

Original Music: Bernard Herrmann

Written by François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard from the novel by William Irish...

As Jules et Jim gets a re-release in time for the 90th anniversary on Sunday of the French director’s birth, we pan across his greatest works

This worldly comedy of love is an example of how Truffaut always aspired to something lighthearted with even a touch of Lubitschian comedy. But it’s a very 70s piece of work in its knowing and slightly louche celebration of male romantic conquest (it got a Hollywood remake directed by Blake Edwards with Burt Reynolds). Charles Denner plays Bertrand, a guy who loves all women with the passion of a connoisseur or a collector; at his funeral, the service is thronged with his female admirers.

Louis Malle’s French thriller is cooler than cool — his first dramatic film is a slick suspense item with wicked twists of fate and images to die for: 1) Jeanne Moreau at the height of her beauty 2) walking through beautifully lit Parisian back streets 3) accompanied by a fantastic Miles Davis soundtrack. Murder in Paris doesn’t get any better.

Elevator to the Gallows

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 335

1957 / B&W / 1:66 anamorphic 16:9 / 88 min. / Ascenseur pour l’échafaud, Frantic / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 6, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly, Yori Bertin, Jean Wall, Iván Petrovich, Elga Andersen, Lino Ventura, Charles Denner.

Cinematography: Henri Decaë

Film Editor: Léonide Azar

Original Music: Miles Davis

Written by Louis Malle, Roger Nimier, Noël Calef from his novel

Produced by Jean Thuillier

Directed by Louis Malle

French director Louis Malle’s first fiction film is an assured and artistically adventurous suspense item. Unlike...

A breezy five-episode compilation movie about swindles plays out in five film capitals, under the eye of five different directors including Claude Chabrol and Jean-Luc Godard. But Roman Polanski’s Amsterdam segment couldn’t be included, which is a shame. It’s in B&W ‘scope, and everybody gets to bring their favorite cameraman and composer along.

The World’s Most Beautiful Swindlers

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1964 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen / 95 108, 124 min. / Street Date April 25, 2017 / Les plus belles escroqueries du monde / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring: Mie Hama, Ken Mitsuda, Nicole Karen, Gabriella Giorgelli, Jan Teulings, Arnold Gelderman, Guido Giuseppone, Giuseppe Mannajuolo, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Catherine Deneuve, Francis Blanche, Sacha Briquet, Jean-Louis Maury, Philomène Toulouse, Charles Denner, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Seberg, László Szabó.

Cinematography: Raoul Coutard, Tonino Delli Colli, Jerzy Lipman, Asakazu Nakai, Jean Rabier

Film Editor:

Original Music: Serge Gainsbourg, Pierre Jansen, Krzysztof Komeda, Michel Legrand, Keitaro Miho, Piero Umiliani...

Nearly two decades into a career that has since spanned nearly seven, Jeanne Moreau had already worked under the direction of Godard, Malle, Welles, Antonioni, Demy, Ophüls, Frankenheimer and Buñuel, among others, by the time she collaborated again with François Truffaut, who had previously helped make her a star with Jules and Jim. Their third collaboration (the first being 400 Blows), The Bride Wore Black, a psycho-thriller inspired by the work of his hero Alfred Hitchcock again put her in the spotlight, this time as a vengeful seductress to which Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman’s Bride of Kill Bill is much indebted to (though the homage crazed auteur claims to have never seen the film). With incredible bipolar turns, Moreau plays Julie Kohler, a widow on a mission to take revenge on the five men (including Claude Rich, Michel Bouquet, Michael Lonsdale, Daniel Boulanger and Charles Denner) responsible for the death of her husband.

Some movies just vanish.

While Costa-Gavras continues to enjoy a high reputation for his sixties and seventies political thrillers (perhaps more respected than watched, which is a shame) and to some extent for his later American movies (more watched than respected, also a shame), The Sleeping Car Murders (1965), one of his earliest works, is so hard to see that I wound up watching a pan-and-scanned off-air recording taped on VHS from Scottish Television sometime in the eighties, and dubbed into English. At least Simone Signoret seems to have done her own re-voicing, but her erring husband Yves Montand has that strained Amurrican tone I associate with Robert Rietty doing Orson Welles.

So Costa-Gavras' movie, formerly a missing person, turns up as a homicide victim, mutilated to prevent identification. With the performances defaced, the compositions utterly ruined, and the editing patterns minced in this copy (because a cut doesn't mean the...

Perhaps we should all agree the term “urban update” should be kept as far away from studio pitches as possible? The descriptor -- besides sounding like a mandatory software patch -- just does not do the film it's touting any favors whatsoever. But, that hasn't stopped the latest remake to be deigned as such from picking up a charismatic leading man in rapper/actor Common, and worthy source material in Francois Truffaut's 1977 film “The Man Who Loved Women.”

Shadow and Act reports that the update, which comes after a pretty dismal Blake Edwards remake starring Burt Reynolds and Julie Andrews, will transplant the original film's Paris location to Buenos Aires, where Marc Guiness (Common) decides to pen a memoir about the myriad relationships throughout his life. First-time feature director J. Kevin Swain, who has 'til now made a name with music videos and, er, “Being Bobby Brown,” will helm the project,...