Truffaut hadn't long before interviewed Hitchcock extensively and must have felt he'd picked his subject's brains enough to direct his own homage to the Master. He even took as his inspiration another story by the same writer, Cornell Woolrich, who'd devised "Rear Window" and had Bernard Herrman compose the soundtrack music for the movie.
The result is a stylish, stylised thriller as we join avenging angel (or devil) Jeanne Moreau in her hunting down of her wedding list (thanks Kate!) of the five men who had a part in the accidental killing of her childhood sweetheart husband on their actual wedding day.
One at a time, she inveigles her way into her quarries' lives where she either improvises or carefully plans their executions, revealing her true identity to each only at the moment of their death. Her only problem might be her final target, who has inconveniently wound up in prison but in a neat twist she finds a simple way to even get to him.
The film is entertaining and it's fun to spot the Hitchcock motifs Truffaut adopts but somehow I found Moreau's performance just a little too icy and calculating, like when she tricks a man's child into almost becoming an accomplice in his own father's death or when she plays the seductress to a shy and reserved bachelor. It's also worth pointing out that the initial killing was an accident and that only one of the the ill-fated five actually fired the fatal shot, although obviously they had failed to own up to the deed.
I also didn't appreciate all the detrimental talk about women which proliferates the film and couldn't work out if Truffaut was reflecting or exaggerating the traditional French chauvinism of the time. One or two of the murders also seemed to just lack the finesse and precision which Hitchcock would have employed, particularly the first one, which looked decidedly fake in its depiction.
Still, filmed crisply mostly in daylight, I was certainly entertained by the movie even as I just felt something holding me back from fully engaging with it and Moreau's mission of mercilessness.
The result is a stylish, stylised thriller as we join avenging angel (or devil) Jeanne Moreau in her hunting down of her wedding list (thanks Kate!) of the five men who had a part in the accidental killing of her childhood sweetheart husband on their actual wedding day.
One at a time, she inveigles her way into her quarries' lives where she either improvises or carefully plans their executions, revealing her true identity to each only at the moment of their death. Her only problem might be her final target, who has inconveniently wound up in prison but in a neat twist she finds a simple way to even get to him.
The film is entertaining and it's fun to spot the Hitchcock motifs Truffaut adopts but somehow I found Moreau's performance just a little too icy and calculating, like when she tricks a man's child into almost becoming an accomplice in his own father's death or when she plays the seductress to a shy and reserved bachelor. It's also worth pointing out that the initial killing was an accident and that only one of the the ill-fated five actually fired the fatal shot, although obviously they had failed to own up to the deed.
I also didn't appreciate all the detrimental talk about women which proliferates the film and couldn't work out if Truffaut was reflecting or exaggerating the traditional French chauvinism of the time. One or two of the murders also seemed to just lack the finesse and precision which Hitchcock would have employed, particularly the first one, which looked decidedly fake in its depiction.
Still, filmed crisply mostly in daylight, I was certainly entertained by the movie even as I just felt something holding me back from fully engaging with it and Moreau's mission of mercilessness.