1969 - THE SIREN OF THE MISSISSIPPI, Francois Truffaut's version of Vertigo

Truffaut the champion of Hitchcock, made 4 films which were sort of a tribute to Hitchcock with various degrees of success.  The Siren of Mississippi is one of them.   Truffaut admired Hitchcock, but he was temperamentally unsuited to make films like Hitchcock. Truffaut always had too much empathy for his characters. Hitchcock generally used the characters in his films to interact with his set pieces which kind of tended to make them seem like cardboard cutouts. Truffaut wasn't above improvising with his stars while making his films, something Hitchcock would never have done.

 

The Siren of the Mississippi is about a mail order bride who arrives on a tropical island to marry the owner of a cigarette factory. As it turns out she is not the person she appears to be from her letters and she ends up stealing her husband's money

From this starting point the story becomes a tale of obsessive love. Truffaut had major stars in this film, Jean Paul Belmondo and Catherine Denevue. He also had a bigger budget than usual and apparently shot in sequence, which is not the most economical way to make a film.

The film at times has that funny look that French films have when they shoot on location, kind of a hollow and bare,  it's almost like no one thought to buy any furniture for the rooms they are supposed to be living in.  It's still a Truffaut film so it's worth a viewing although it is something of a disappointment.

 123 minutes, written by Truffaut