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The Bride Wore Black



Jeanne Moreau (Jules et Jim) stars as the titular bride, who after marrying her love sees him murdered on the steps outside the church. From here she enacts her ruthless revenge on the group of men responsible. Undoubtedly an influence on Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, François Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black was itself influenced by the director's idol, Alfred Hitchcock. Adapting celebrated crime writer Cornell Woolrich (who was also the author of the short story Hitchcock's Rear Window is based on) Truffaut's film is a deliciously entertaining tale that was one of the director's biggest hits. Alongside Moreau, the film boasts a sensational cast, including Michael Lonsdale, Jean-Claude Brialy, Charles Denner and Michel Bouquet among others, and features a score by the maestro, Bernard Herrman (Psycho).

Limited Edition Special Features:

• High-Definition digital transfer
• Original uncompressed French mono PCM audio
• Archival interviews with François Truffaut and Jeanne Moreau (1968, 1969)
• Appreciation by filmmaker Kent Jones (Hitchcock/Truffaut) (2023)
• Barry Forshaw on Cornell Woolrich and the adaptation (2023)
• Original trailer
• Les surmenes (Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, 1957, 21 mins) - an early short written by Truffaut and starring Jean-Claude Brialy
• Optional English subtitles
• Reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters
• Limited edition booklet featuring new writing on the film by Emmanuel Burdeau, archival writing by Truffaut and Moreau, and a contemporary article on the film by Penelope Houston
• Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings

I'm looking forward to this, though I'm now wondering if I should put off buying the other MGM Truffauts that Kino have just released as well!

Good to see Lee surmenes in the extras list. I think it's a terrific short, though I'm led to believe that Doniol-Valcroze's later features (which I haven't seen) have been forgotten in comparison to the rest of the Young Turks' for a reason.

Do we know if the Kino transfers and this one are the same as the ones released on the Truffaut Arte French box?

Very likely. I don't think there has been new restorations since.

Rayon Vert wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 4:06 pm Do we know if the Kino transfers and this one are the same as the ones released on the Truffaut Arte French box?

The box where some titles were 25fps interlaced, if I don´t misremember?

Are they? I don't know. I have the box but haven't opened it!

IIRC, all of the movies are 1080i50 except one (maybe L'enfant sauvage).

Thanks tenia.

The Emmanuel Burdeau essay has been dropped

ANNOUNCEMENT: Unfortunately we have had to remove our lead essay from the release of The Bride Wore Black. The studio demanded cuts to it that strip too much detail and the writer and we were unwilling to compromise so felt that it would sit better with only archival content.

We will look to publish the essay in another format later in the year. We would like to do an annual of all our film writings for 2023 for this Christmas (along the lines of Dirty Arthouse) and will be looking into that. Apologies for this.

It's actually an essay by Philip Kemp, and I'm guessing the problem is that it's a positive but not glowing review of the film

ChunkyLover wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 5:42 pm The Emmanuel Burdeau essay has been dropped

ANNOUNCEMENT: Unfortunately we have had to remove our lead essay from the release of The Bride Wore Black. The studio demanded cuts to it that strip too much detail and the writer and we were unwilling to compromise so felt that it would sit better with only archival content.

We will look to publish the essay in another format later in the year. We would like to do an annual of all our film writings for 2023 for this Christmas (along the lines of Dirty Arthouse) and will be looking into that. Apologies for this.

The writer and we

should be the title of a movie.

Surprised that a studio would care that much about a single essay. But then we had the Ishtar situation with Sony (and Beatty?) where they had issues with the supplements.

Finch wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 7:06 pm Surprised that a studio would care that much about a single essay. But then we had the Ishtar situation with Sony (and Beatty?) where they had issues with the supplements.

Not Beatty, it was Elaine May who wouldn’t budge on multiple factors. Criterion would have played ball. Hell, Mikey and Nicky has had about as many versions as Michael Mann’s Heat

beamish14 wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 7:20 pm Not Beatty, it was Elaine May who wouldn’t budge on multiple factors. Criterion would have played ball. Hell, Mikey and Nicky has had about as many versions as Michael Mann’s Heat

What’s your source there, re: May?

For obvious reasons, I’m curious to hear this too.

Will they make it available online?
EDIT: Saw the annual part. That's actually a great idea.

The essay was shared on the Discord server but I'm not sure if it's cool to share outside of that

My first time seeing this film and I was disappointed, actually. Jeanne Moreau is fine as are the men she murders throughout the film but the pacing is off (Truffaut holds on her white scarf floating in the wind post-first murder for what feels like half an eternity, for example) and I got bored after the third murder (also, the kid playing the third victim's son is absolutely terrible). The movie throws a little curveball eventually but it was too late. Truffaut's sensibilities feel like the wrong match for this material. There isn't enough tension or at least black comedy to offset that lack of tension. But the Hermann score and Cotard cinematography are cool.

It doesn't help that the master provided to Radiance (and presumably Kino?) looks dated. Chris gave the image a 7 in his review, I'd have scored this a little lower actually. So between the film itself and the picture quality, this is the first outright disappointment for me in Radiance's first year line-up but that's okay. I still love them for their choices of Big Time Gambling Boss and May's other title, Yakuza Graveyard.

I like the film more in retrospect, but I agree with your assessment overall. And having only seen a couple of films in Radiance's overall lineup beforehand, I must admit that the films they have announced over the past six or so months are largely a less interesting lot than the explosive initial announcement. I get the impression that they wanted to put their best foot forward with a very eclectic selection of films, before 'settling down' a bit with a little Altman, a B tier Truffaut, and that other other OTHER film directed by Dennis Hopper. Not that I'm complaining. For better and for worse, not every release can be A Woman Kills and Miami Blues.

What A Disgrace wrote: Sun May 14, 2023 5:05 pm Not that I'm complaining. For better and for worse, not every release can be A Woman Kills and Miami Blues.

I'm tempted to blind buy one of these two but not sure which one to go for first.

I think the Limited Edition run of Miami Blues is probably going to go OOP first, if the booklet and scanavo case matter to you. I enjoyed the pieces in the MB booklet (not bought A Woman Kills).

Alright. I just ordered Miami Blues. That’ll take me up to four Radiance Blu rays (all blind buys), which isn’t bad for a label that hasn’t even existed for an entire year.

I still have yet to get to this release but remember it first catching my interest when an early sequence from the film was dissected in a post on the Destructible Man blog back in 2007, which was dedicated to cataloguing the most notable dummy deaths in cinema! And I really should get to seeing it sooner rather than later if only to check if my sneaking suspicion that Jess Franco may have stolen its premise for his Soledad Miranda starring film She Killed In Ecstasy is correct or not.

Finch wrote: Sun May 14, 2023 3:45 pm My first time seeing this film and I was disappointed, actually. Jeanne Moreau is fine as are the men she murders throughout the film but the pacing is off (Truffaut holds on her white scarf floating in the wind post-first murder for what feels like half an eternity, for example) and I got bored after the third murder (also, the kid playing the third victim's son is absolutely terrible). The movie throws a little curveball eventually but it was too late. Truffaut's sensibilities feel like the wrong match for this material. There isn't enough tension or at least black comedy to offset that lack of tension. But the Hermann score and Cotard cinematography are cool.

I had next to no memory of this, and was glad I went in blind because all the pleasures found here occur in the first third before the reveal. It's an interesting failure, because Truffaut fares a stronger batting avg when imitating Hitchcock via withholding and confidently measured film grammar than he does when he caves into his humanistic sensibilities and can't find an angle to crack through to make this approach work. Part of the problem is a lack of vessel in Moreau. She does her best within the confines of a non-character, but the part is only given the opportunity to present as a single shade of vapid. She could be gifted some rope to be pitched as an enigmatic woman, but instead she comes across as a defined person of thin substance, which is irritatingly diagnostic and contradicts the humanity Truffaut wants so desperately to see in her, jamming a square peg in a round hole. Even this would be interesting if taken further (i.e. these men have traumatized her into becoming a diagnostic personification of emptiness; a noir protagonist on a one-note existential mission to death - murder and ego death in self) but Truffaut plays things too safe and clean, and so we have no investment from the artist to care about that barely-complex multidimensionality.

I do kinda think it unintentionally works as an anti-Hitchcock film, where Truffaut can't get out of his own way to take full-measures on his influence, so the 'reveal' to the mystery is so dumb that it casts a spell of repulsion to the audience and the film just drags from there - contrary to Hitchcock's exhilarating twists, after which the suspense almost always accelerates but at least simmers in place. Here, as the murders get more and more drawn out, and the director begins to elide the actual action(?!), it almost becomes an in-joke of artistic suicide; hard to believe it wasn't intentional, as it works so transparently at odds with Hitchcock's instincts. The most interesting self-destructive vehicle in the film is Truffaut himself behind the camera. So I guess I sorta admire this film with reservations - the first section is amusing, the second is a huge disappointment, and the last is a droll, accidentally reflexive lesson on the value of staying in your lane.

That's an interesting take and makes it sound similar to the Gus Van Sant Psycho remake! (Your comment also reminded of that extra with Claude Chabrol on Criterion's M disc where he talks about doing a short 'remake' of a key scene of M and being unable to add his own personality to the material because Fritz Lang had directed the sequence to the point where any additions that Chabrol could have made would have been distractingly jarring, not just aesthetically but seemingly morally too)