VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

morrison-dylan-fan With a poll taking place on ICM for the best films of 1969,I took a look at what the major auteurs of the French New Wave (FNW) had been up to that year. Finding The Bride Wore Black to be one of my favourite films him,I travelled to Mississippi to witness François Truffaut's second Cornell Woolrich adaptation.View on the film:For his second Woolrich adaptation, writer/ director François Truffaut keeps the FNW styling pressed on Agnès Guillemot's editing, swiped with multi-layered dissolves,spilt screens and brash black screen cuts. Reuniting with cinematographer Denys Clerval after Stolen Kisses, Truffaut continues to open up on his Hitchcock inspiration via graceful tracking shots capturing the boiling heat on the Reunion island, back-screen projected car scenes creating a lovers on the run thriller atmosphere, and a return to the Switzerland safe house from Truffaut's first Noir Shoot The Piano Player,snowing in the romance between Mahé and Vergano on a doomed poetic note.Whilst his other Noir's of the era had a firm foundation for their playing around with time, (the extended flashbacks of Piano,the kill list of Bride,and the 4th wall breaking of A Gorgeous Girl Like Me) the time-frame Truffaut springs here feels incredibly disjointed,as the passage of time between Mahé and Vergano (played with an alluring Femme Fatale edge by Catherine Deneuve) romance stutters between feeling like it has taken place over years-from her appearance and Mahé (a restless Noir loner Jean-Paul Belmondo) being in a mental hospital, to a chance encounter with a detective stating that it has only been a matter of weeks. Basking in the heat of the island, Truffaut does well at establishing doubt over Mahé and Vergano marriage being too perfect. Leaving behind Mahé almost penniless, Truffaut aims for Hitchcock-style twists that miss due to the revelation that Vergano is not who she claims,(who has sent piles of letters to Mahé)making Mahé's passionate love for a total stranger feel rather random,as Mahé searches for the Mississippi mermaid.

Dalbert Pringle You know - I seriously think that this 1969 "WTF!?" French film should be promptly re-titled - "The Bad, the Beautiful, and the Boring." - 'Cause, in my eyes, that's all that this wretched "Francois Truffaut" production amounted to.Filled-to-overflowing with one laughably preposterous situation after another - This, to me, was one of those ludicrous romance stories that literally cried, begged, and demanded to be spoofed, big-time.Starring Catherine Deneuve (one of the most vacantly frigid actresses that French cinema has ever produced) - This film's scenes of sexual intimacy were (thanks to Deneuve) some of the most flaccid and non-arousing ever recorded on celluloid.Put plain and simple - I rank Mississippi Mermaid as being just pure adulterated excrement - Nothing more. Nothing less.

Claudio Carvalho In Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, the owner of a cigarette factory Louis Mahé (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is engaged through correspondence with Julie Roussel and he does not know her. When Julie arrives in the island to get married with Louis, he waits for her in the docks but Louis does not recognize Julie in the passenger vessel and finds that she is totally different from the picture she had sent to Louis. They get married and Louis shares his bank accounts with her. When Julie's sister writes a letter to Louis asking her sister to write to her, Louis discovers that the woman is not Julie that is missing. Further, he finds that the woman has cleared his bank accounts and left the island. Louis and Julie's sister hire an efficient private detective Comolli (Michel Bouquet) and Louis travels to France seeking the woman, but he has a nervous breakdown in Nice and is submitted to an intense sleeping therapy in a clinic. He recovers and finds that the woman, actually Marion Vergano (Catherine Deneuve), works in the Phoenix Club Privé in Antibes and lives in the low-budget Monorail Hotel. Louis breaks in her room and when she arrives from the club, she tells that she was happy with him but her former dangerous lover Richard had blackmailed her. Louis is still in love with Marion and escapes with her to the countryside. But Comolli is chasing Marion in France accused of murdering Julie."La Sirène du Mississipi" is a film-noir by the great director/writer François Truffaut, with an unconventional love story of passion, murder and love that hurts. The femme fatale Catherine Deneuve is astonishing, probably in the top of her beauty and is delightful to see her face and the topless scenes on the road and in the room. Jean-Paul Belmondo is very athletic, and the sequence when he escalates the wall of the hotel is impressive. Catherine Deneuve makes this film worth and gives credibility to the passion and lust of Louis. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "A Sereia do Mississipi" ("The Mississippi Mermaid")

MartinHafer The first 1/3 of this movie I loved and thought it was going to be one of Truffaut's best films. I loved the plot where a pen pal marries a man from half way around the world--sight unseen. Especially when this woman turns out to be a fraud and was responsible for the death of the REAL pen pal so she could take her place! She then cleaned out the husband's huge bank account and disappeared! I was really hooked and wanted to see more,...And then, the movie fell apart and became just plain dumb! Despite her coming from New Caladonia (an island in the Pacific) and he from Reunion (an island in the Indian Ocean), when he goes on a trip to the South of France, he stumbles upon her almost immediately. Hmm,....odds are 187,000,000 to 1 but he finds her. Then, instead of either killing her or turning her over to the police, he forgives her--even when she acknowledges what she has done. Okay--this is tough to believe, but okay,...but then he helps to hide her from a private detective by murdering him!!!! No one is that stupid! Yes, the character Catherine Deneuve plays is quite beautiful but come on folks--this is just silly. Plus, if he only wanted her as a sex object, then why would he do this for a woman who is often frigid and completely selfish and evil.This movie, due to it's very ridiculous plot, does not deserve such high ratings! Unless you are a die-hard Truffaut fan, try another film--even one of Truffaut's--just NOT this one.