Truffaut was one of the most astute interpreters of Hitchcock, the author of an endlessly rich book based on an interview with him. But in true New Wave tradition he found his most profound critical/interpretive tool to be the cinema itself. In this Cornell Woolrich adaptation, Jeanne Moreau is the bride whose pleasure is cut down by a nuptial-day assassination. Like a reverse/perverse Snow White, she sets about avenging herself on the five men responsible for her groom's death, entering into their lives to fascinate, terrify, and ultimately dwarf them. Truffaut has described this film as his homage to Hitchcock but, as observers have noted, it is Hitchcock treated in the manner of Renoir. The "almost Proustian ability to recapture the past in a skein of memories and desires" (Time) could never be mistaken for a Hitchcock trait and perhaps, after all, Truffaut's sincerest tribute to Hitchcock was a film that was purely Truffaut.