Truffaut's "The Bride Wore Black"

The first thing which struck me about the Bride Wore Black (1968) was the similarities to Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. They both follow a violent murderous bride taking revenge some time after her wedding day was violently disrupted. Both brides cross the names of their victims off a kill list. Additionally, I was struck by the similarities of each film having a murder staged in a familial home, with the presence of a child potentially disrupting the bride’s murderous intentions. Tarantino has been open about his influences and Kill Bill is clearly an homage to a range of genres such as samurai, kung fu and the Western. I was interested to read Tarantino says in an interview he’d never seen the Bride Wore Black and is not a Truffaut fan. He’s a Godard man.

It’s not surprising Tarantino cites a French New Wave director as a major influence. Afterall both their styles of filmmaking involve repackaging familiar stories into new forms. The Bride Wore Black can be seen as an homage to the Hitchcockian device of building suspense. It creates a sense where you know a murder is going to occur (and the likely victim) but you don’t know how or when it going happen, until you are almost doubting whether it will happen at all. It is less about the killing itself and more about the buildup. Hitchcock is also famous for his focus on seemingly mundane objects (flagged by a close-up) which will take on crucial significance later on. Truffaut uses the same device. The most telling example is the Bride’s action of pouring a glass of water into a potplant, the repetition of which will later reveal her identity to one of the victim’s friends.

Truffaut’s Bride is from the outset presented as a mysterious femme fatale. Men are invariably drawn to her although they are not sure why and she reveals little. Significantly all these men are womanizers or crooks. Initially it would seem that she is killing at random, perhaps as revenge on behalf of all disenfranchised females. However, approximately two-thirds into the film her motives (and the men’s involvement in her newly wed’s murder) are revealed. Suddenly the tone and the audience’s relationship to the film shifts. It is no longer an intrigue about why she is killing but whether she will finish off all her victims. She declares her single-minded purpose, but do we really believe she’ll go through with it? This is what makes the section with Fergus, the artist, so fascinating.

Will love save this merciless killer? Her affiliation with Fergus is the longest of the film and when he confesses his love for her there is the possibility that she will abandon her plan and learn to love again. She takes her time with him and the audience is lulled into a momentary hope for her redemption. It is the old Hamlet dilemma – is she delaying the deed from lack of want or simply lack of opportunity. When she ruthlessly disposes of him too, it is sudden and not even shown on camera.

Interestingly she does not succumb to any maternal or sexual instinct, which are supposed to overcome women (and indeed do Tarantino’s Bride who gives up her Deadly Viper Assassination Squad lifestyle to become a mother). Truffaut’s Bride is remorseless when confessing. This is a film open to a feminist reading. Not only does it have an active female driving the storyline, unlike the femme fatales from the 40s noirs, she is never overtly punished (or domesticated). Sure she ends up in jail (however this is deliberately as part of her plan) and there is the implication of punishment but the film ends ambiguously with the Bride fulfilling her plan and disposing of her final victim. Again, this is not shown nor what follows. The final shot of the film is the prison corridor, leaving a certain ambiguity which does not overtly punish. It is a bit like Thelma and Louise’s triumphant drive off the cliff or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid being frozen in action as they run into a hail of bullets, consequently immortalized.