The Bride Wore Black

A melancholy beauty (Jeanne Moreau) dressed in stark black and white travels from city to city with a notebook containing the names of five men whom she methodically stalks, seduces, and kills one-by-one. As she makes her way down the list, the connection between the men and her motive for murder begins to take shape. An ice-cold, deadly stylish, blackly comic revenge thriller that anticipates Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill (2003), The Bride Wore Black is François Truffaut's cinematic homage to the Master of Suspense. Based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich, author of the short story that inspired Rear Window, the film also features a moody, dynamic score by long-time Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann, and bold, graphic color cinematography by French New Wave master Raoul Coutard. While aficionados will be able to pick out a number of Hitchcockian themes, references, and stylistic flourishes, Truffaut was most inspired by the director's purely visual approach to narration, allowing the camera to reveal what the characters would prefer to keep out of sight.