For example, in one particular scene, in which our central character stalks one of her victims through the junkyard where he works, we get Truffaut setting up a series of shots that continually teases us with the slow-build of the sequence, the cut-away to the gun and the impending moment before the expected gunshot and then - unexpectedly - the police arrive and arrest the man before any retribution can be taken. Whenever we imagine that a scene will play out to our usual expectations, with Hermann's orchestrations and the inventive camera work of Godard's regular cinematographer Raoul Coutard setting the scene, something else happens that throws the film completely off course. Like Blowup, the film can be seen as something of an "anti-thriller", or a film that sets up a number of potentially electrifying Hitchcockian like set pieces and then continually thwarts them - or indeed, forgets about them completely - as the mechanics of the plot push us further and further away from the more recognisable aspects of the story at hand. I expected from the plot-outline that the film would be incredibly dour and austere but that really isn't the case with the mixture of lurid, almost B-movie style subject matter, revenge and farce managing to come together fairly well for the most part, as Truffaut tinkers with the expected codes and conventions of the thriller genre in much the same way that Antonioni did with the much superior masterpiece Blowup (1966). I was genuinely quite surprised by the use of humour here. In doing so, the director is able to produce a film that is not only interesting in terms of story and character, but often very funny too. Whereas it would have been fairly easy for the filmmaker to produce a work that was a shot-for-shot recreation of something that Hitchcock might have done - like for example with De Palma or Van Sant - Truffaut takes the familiar style and iconography of Hitchcock's work - in particular from films like Strangers on a Train (1951), To Catch a Thief (1955) and most prominently Marnie (1964) - and fashions a film that is, on the one hand, an affectionate ode to the filmmaker and, on the other hand, a cruel lampoon.
The Bride Wore Black (1968) is noted as being director François Truffaut's gleeful homage/pastiche of the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, with the usual characteristics of deception and retribution, cool cinematography and a lush score by none other than Bernard Hermann all being co-opted alongside some nicely subtle allusions to the broader aspects of the thriller and mystery genres.
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