The Bride Wore Black: Did François Truffaut’s film inspire Kill Bill?

Quentin Tarantino swears he hasn’t seen the film, but the similarities are uncanny… Judge for yourself, this evening, on France 5.

On the occasion of the rebroadcast of The Bride was in blackgreat classic by François Truffaut, to be seen again this evening on France 5, we are republishing this article on the many similarities between its plot and that of Kill Billby Quentin Tarantino.

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We are in 2017. Jeanne Moreau has just died. Among her most notable roles, everyone remembers the heroine of The Bride was in blackthriller by François Truffaut released in 1968. At the time, the director was preparing his book interview with Alfred Hitchcock, filmmaker who adapted Rear windowby William Irish, a few years earlier. This is the pseudonym of Cornell Woolrich, American author of numerous “pulp fiction”who imagined here the story of a marriage that goes wrong. On the wedding day, five men kill the bridegroom. To avenge him, the young bride will murder them one by one, crossing their names off her list. A pitch that is very reminiscent of that of Kill Bill, where five professional killers wreak carnage on the heroine’s wedding day. The bride will then relentlessly hunt them down to eliminate them.

When it was released in 2003, Quentin Tarantino swore he had not seen this French classic. “I’ve been told about it, but I’ve never seen it, he explained during a Japanese interview devoted to the many inspirations of Kill Bill. Everyone says to me, ‘Oh, your movie is really a lot like The Bride Wore Black.’ I know it’s adapted from a Cornell Woolrich novel, but I haven’t seen it… because I’m not a Truffaut fan. I’m not rejecting the film, eh, but I don’t know it. I’m a fan of Godard, not of Trauffaut. So I’m aware of all these similarities, but I haven’t seen it.”

The same year, he rehearsed Inrocks that The Bride was in black had absolutely no influence on his diptych. “It’s funny because I had never seen The Bride Wore Black, but I know it’s the same kind of story as Kill Bill. I’m also a big fan of Cornell Woolrich but I hadn’t read it. I accept the comparison with Truffaut, but that’s not where I got it! The Cinémathèque should organize a double bill with The Bride… and Kill Bill!”

However, there are many points in common between the two films. For example, no one knows the identity of the culprits except the bride. The killers form a “club of five” : a group of singles in that of 1968 and “the international detachment of murderous vipers” in that of 2003. On the other hand, their murder is involuntary in Truffaut, while they organized the massacre consciously in Tarantino.

The two brides have drawn up a list of killers, whom they will hunt down and kill. Each time they are murdered, they cross out the name of the victim in their notebook. Two striking coincidences are then filmed: after the first murder, Jeanne Moreau and Uma Thurman take the plane, and they wait to be on board to cross off the name. Later, the fourth victim’s name is followed by a question mark. Is she alive? Dead? This mystery will take some time to solve.

Finally, the two directors play on the bride’s name. In Truffaut’s thriller, the spectators know it, but the victims only learn it a few seconds before their death. With Tarantino, it’s the opposite: the victims know their killer, but the public learns it quite late in the story.

One last resemblance for the road: Uma Thurman wears almost the same haircut as Jeanne Moreau in another Quentin Tarantino film, pulp Fiction. A film which is inspired by several American stories from the beginning of the 20th century, notably the writings of William Irish/Cornell Woolrich.

How exactly are Quentin Tarantino’s films related?